The Impossible New Life of Cate Thomas
by BeautifulLetdown11
Summary: All Cate Thomas wanted was to have her picture taken by the entrance to the Torchwood Hub, as close to her favorite TV show as she'd ever get. But she was closer than she could have known, and no one should ever stand too close to the Rift...
1. Welcome to Torchwood

_Disclaimer: I obviously don't own _Torchwood_ or _Doctor Who_. I did create Cate Thomas, but that's probably just as obvious._

_A/N: Enjoy! And, if you happen to feel like reviewing, it would make me very happy as this is my first story ever. Thanks! _

_Oh, and, this is starting under the _Torchwood _section, but it will eventually continue under the _Doctor Who_ section. Just a bit of a forewarning; it'll make more sense when it gets to the point where the switch needs to be made. And I'll warn you all again when it happens, too._

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August 3, 2007

I've never kept a diary before. I mean, I've tried over the years, but I always ended up so far behind in my entries that I just gave up. Besides, it's not like my life was the height of excitement – I lived in Stowe, Vermont, a teeny-tiny New England town with more cows than people, I swear. It embodied the word "quaint", which is basically a nice way of saying… well, "dull". Don't get me wrong, I loved my life… but it was simple, all of it. Nothing Earth-shattering ever happened, so keeping a diary wasn't exactly a necessary task – it was pretty much the same things every day, with _very_ little deviation.

So yeah, the point is, I never kept a diary, because there was no real reason to back in Stowe. Let me tell you, there's reason now. I'm not in Stowe anymore. I'm not even in _America_ anymore, but at least that much was planned. I was on vacation with my parents, "across the pond" as they say. We were taking a self-guided tour of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

It's that last one there that got me into this mess. Wales. Cardiff, specifically. Cardiff and its darn rift. (Rift? Should it be capitalized? Probably. Darn Rift, then.) Cardiff and its darn Rift that actually _exists_.

It's not supposed to. It obviously _does_, and I should know – I fell through it, after all (though I think they have that terminology slightly wrong; I never felt gravity working against me or anything, I just sort of… walked through it, I guess). But this Rift really, really, really shouldn't exist. This Rift was made up for the television show, _Doctor Who_ (and its spin-off, _Torchwood_). Seriously, going to Cardiff should not mean having to genuinely worry that you're going to go walking through the Rift from _Doctor Who_/_Torchwood_, because they are TV shows and, thus, fiction. But I guess not everything that _should_ be true, actually _is _true.

Because, believe it or not… What I just _said_ is the truth. I fell (walked?) through the _Doctor Who_/_Torchwood_ Rift, and crossed from my dimension – where all of this is a TV show – into the world of the Doctor and the Torchwood team. _I am in a TV show_. And I can't get back home. Ever. Now I know how Rose Tyler felt – or, more accurately, how the Doctor felt, because at least Rose went with her mom, dad, and Mickey. But Rose was all the Doctor had then… he lost everything to a different dimension, and so did I.

Ah, enough with the depressing stuff. I had my good cry over it, and guess what? I'm still here. And here is where I'm going to stay, so I may as well get used to it. So far – besides, you know, the "sorry, you can't get home" bit – it's actually been quite nice. I do like it here, in Cardiff… I have to try to look on the bright side. I miss my home, my friends, my family, more than words can express, but I can't do anything about it. So I'll focus on the fact that I always thought it would be amazing to travel with the Doctor or work for Torchwood, and now I am!

Well, the second part, anyway… technically. It's all pretty complicated, and it's _way_ too late to get into all that tonight. I definitely need to get some sleep; it's been a long day! But, suffice it to say that I'll be getting this sleep courtesy of one Captain Jack Harkness, who's created a bit of a "guestroom" for me – in the Torchwood Hub! (Ok, so it's really just a corner sectioned off by a few potted trees, with a mattress and blankets on the floor, but it's comfortable enough, and still a nice gesture!)


	2. Gone

_Disclaimer: I still don't own _Doctor Who_ or _Torchwood_. I still give full credit for all things from those shows to the brilliant people who created/own/work on them. The only character that's mine is still Cate._

_A/N: Thank you all very much for the reviews! I'm very glad you seem to like it so far . Also, I'm sorry it took a while for me to update, but I am in college and that means there's all sorts of work to do sigh. Thank you for your patience; I promise I will be updating this story, even if it takes a bit of time for the next section to go up!_

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August 4, 2007

It's 7:30 in the morning here and I only just woke up half an hour ago, but the Hub is already bustling with activity. Jack's been up for a while – his movement woke me up for a few minutes at 5:00! – and Ianto said he's been here since 6, getting the coffee ready and what-not. Tosh arrived a few minutes ago; I heard her tell Jack she wanted to get a head start on something important-sounding that I didn't quite follow. According to Ianto, Owen and Gwen will get in around 8:00, which is the time everyone (besides himself, and obviously Jack who lives here) usually comes to work.

So here I am, sitting on the couch, eating the corn muffin that Ianto brought me (because, "I haven't the slightest idea what, if anything, Jack does for breakfast, and I figured you'd be too polite to ask" – he was right about that, by the way). Jack's in his office on the phone to U.N.I.T.; Tosh is typing away madly and looking quite determined; Ianto's popping in and out between the main area and the storage areas of the Hub with various and sundry bizarre items in his hands. Various and sundry bizarre _alien _items. And none of them appear to think that any of this is at all unusual.

So, how on Earth did I find myself caught up in this?

Like I mentioned, I was "on holiday" with my parents. It was my graduation gift; I'd always wanted to go to Great Britain and Ireland, so my parents decided we'd go the summer before I went to college. The day all of this happened was our first day in Cardiff, and I'll never forget, I had _just_ been looking at that big waterfall-rock-thing, where the lift for Torchwood is in Roald Dahl Plass, thinking about how awesome it would be if I were _really_ standing on top of some super-secret agency that fights aliens (and the occasional freakish cannibal). Ironically, I vividly remember thinking that unless I got really lucky and somehow landed a role on the show someday, I was at that moment as close as I was ever going to get to Torchwood. Shortly thereafter, my parents and I started heading off to find a nice little place to eat lunch. I got a bit ahead of them, but I didn't think much of it; my gait is naturally faster than both of my parents', so this was nothing unusual. Until, at least, I realized that I wasn't hearing them talk anymore.

I figured I must have gotten too far ahead, so I turned around to check just how far behind they were… and discovered that I couldn't see them at all. Even so, I just figured they had fallen _way_ behind. I waited a minute or two; when they were still completely M.I.A., I tried calling my dad. But despite both of our cell phones' international calling capabilities, the call wouldn't go through; the message on the other end was a soft Welsh voice, saying, "I'm sorry, but this number is not in service" (which was very strange, as my grandmother had just successfully called his phone that morning). So now I was starting to get a little concerned.

I headed back to the waterfall-rock-thing, assuming that my parents would think to look for me there when they realized we were separated. After waiting there for a good half hour, though, it finally started to sink in: they weren't around. I had no idea at that point what could have happened (and even if I _had_ had theories, I guarantee they wouldn't have been anywhere near correct, anyway), but I knew that my best bet was to go to the police.

I got to the police station and told them my story; they were all very kind and sympathetic. They had me try calling my dad again, but the recorded Welsh woman just told me the number wasn't in service, same as before. Then, they had me try calling my mom. That's when things started getting even stranger: that number apparently wasn't in service, either. I tried calling my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my friends… and got the same result every time. I figured something was wrong with my cell phone (even though it was pretty new – what a great time to have a defective phone!), until one of the policemen had me try calling his cell phone – _that_ call went through! Then he tried calling mine, and that worked, too. So my cell phone was working after all… but how could everyone else's numbers (including some land lines!) not be in service!?

None of the police officers had an explanation for me. So, the man who had been helping me test my cell phone (I found out his name was PC Lee) took me into his office and told me that he was going to call in some "special detectives" who specialize in "strange cases" like mine. At any other time, I would have immediately thought of _Torchwood _– not seriously, of course, but I would have chuckled at the similarities between life and the show (something strange had happened to me right over where the Rift should be, and now the police were calling in the special ops because of it!). But I was so frazzled by then that I only subconsciously processed his words. I'd never been all that close to my parents, but still, they _were_ my parents. They might be in trouble, and there wasn't room for anything else in my mind but that.

Needless to say, I was therefore extremely shocked – and a bit frightened – when PC Lee returned with his "special detectives": Captain Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper!

And it was really them; not John Barrowman and Eve Myles, but _Captain Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper_. I mean, Jack had that _coat_; John Barrowman, I'm sure, would not wear that in the street. And unless my parents had gone mental (and suddenly had connections to the BBC they didn't tell me about) and planned this whole thing as an elaborate trick – which was _highly_ unlikely, with my parents – the police definitely would _not_ kid around by pretending to call in Torchwood. It had to be them, the real deal.

Of course, there was the small issue of that being impossible, but as the two "special detectives" had come to do business, I didn't get much chance to ponder the finer points of what was in front of my eyes; they quite quickly dismissed PC Lee ("beyond the police", alright) and got to work.

Conveniently, "getting to work" involved an introduction. The woman who had-to-be-but-couldn't-be Gwen Cooper pulled PC Lee's chair out from behind his desk and put it closer to mine. She flashed a very friendly (and very Gwen-like) smile.

"Hello. I'm Gwen Cooper," – Oh, my God, she _is_ Gwen Cooper! – "and this is my boss, Captain Jack Harkness." She motioned to the man that really-was-but-really-couldn't-be Jack, who'd remained standing. "We're going to help you find your parents."

I don't know what came over me – I'd promised myself as soon as they walked in the door I wouldn't complicate things by letting them know I knew about them (and certainly not _how_ I knew!), if they were even really the real Torchwood at all! But something snapped when she gave their names, confirming (though not explaining) the impossible. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, "I know who you are. You're Torchwood."

They looked surprised for just a second, then covered it well. Jack walked over and stood next to Gwen's chair.

"Yes, we are. We're Torchwood," Jack said, looking me right in the eye. "Have you had dealings with us before?"

Well, there was no point in hiding now. (Not that I could have, anyway, with Jack staring me down like that. If he was trying to stop me from lying, it was very effective.) I still didn't understand what had happened, or how, but I was clearly truly talking to the real Gwen and Jack. That being completely bizarre – people don't often meet fictional characters, after all – my story would be right up their alley. If anyone could help me make sense of what was going on, it was Torchwood. So, despite sounding completely insane, I decided I may as well tell them the truth – strongly praying that they would believe me.

"I – uh, no," I answered. Not so smoothly, I might add. "I've never – we've never met, if that's what you mean. But I… Well…" I paused and took a deep breath. "I think I fell through the Rift, because last time I checked _Torchwood _was a TV show."

Jack's expression didn't change – I have to say, from what I'd seen on _Torchwood_, I didn't really expect it to – but Gwen was less reserved.

"A – a what?! I … no. No, I'm quite real, thank you. All of this," she motioned around the room, "quite, quite real!" She paused, looking concerned, then turned in her chair to face Jack. "Isn't it?"

For the first time since entering the room, Jack's expression finally softened. He even gave a small smile as he answered, "There are all different types of reality, Gwen. But yes, this is real." He looked at me again. "And I'm sure you'd agree? TV program or not… This all does seem real to you now, doesn't it?"

I nodded vigorously. "Oh yeah. Definitely real."

I felt the flood gates open up again with that assessment. "But… but how!? I mean, okay, different realities, sure, but if I fell through the Rift back in _my_ dimension, that means the Rift exists there, which means all this, it's been real all along in my dimension, even though it's a TV show… How is that _possible_!?"

Jack gave a genuine smile this time. "If I've learned anything in my life thus far, it would be this: Don't. Question. The Rift. It just makes your head spin." I couldn't help but smile back.

"But," he continued, "there is one small issue here. You could be lying. You could be extremely skilled at hacking into computer systems, and found out about Torchwood that way. You could be an alien who knows someone from their home planet that's met us before. Or, you could really be one very lost young woman who's trapped in what used to be just a TV program to her. But I don't know."

Jack walked around Gwen's chair and toward me a bit more. Again, he looked me straight in the eye – definitely trying to find any traces of lying, I decided – and said, "So, tell me something only an omniscient TV-viewer like –presumably – yourself would know. Something that was said or done when no one else was around to hear."

Grinning at the example that came to mind, I asked, "No one but you and who you were talking to? Will that do?" Jack nodded. "Good. So this isn't from _Torchwood_, actually, but from the show it spun-off from – "

Gwen interrupted. "Spun-off!? We're _Torchwood_ and we're just a spin-off?!"

"A very successful spin-off, I promise!" I laughed. I found it funny – and heartening – that despite how bothered Gwen appeared by what I was saying, she was still able to object to the fact that _Torchwood _wasn't the original show. I looked back at Jack. "Anyway, how about this: she was hanging from a barrage balloon, and you had an invisible space ship. You never stood a chance."

Jack smiled, nostalgically. "That I didn't. No one ever did, with Rose." He sighed. "You have a lot in common with her, now, you know – same thing, essentially, happened to both of you."

"Yeah… yeah, I'd thought of that, actually," I answered.

Then I realized something. "Wait – if you're saying the same thing happened to me and Rose… does that mean you believe me?"

"I can't think of any way you would have known about that conversation besides having seen it on TV," Jack responded. He paused. "Well. That's a statement you don't often make about yourself."

"So… really, then?" Gwen asked. "Really? We're a TV program where she comes from? And… we believe that?"

Jack turned to her. "Got a better explanation?" That question could have been rude, but somehow, it wasn't.

"Well, no, but… Jack, I've seen quite a few bizarre things in my time with Torchwood. She's not the first person I've seen come through the Rift; I can handle the whole 'other dimension' thing, even, but _how_ can we be a TV program!?" Poor Gwen seemed as confused as I was.

"Remember what I said earlier, Gwen? 'Don't question the Rift, it makes your head spin'?" Jack asked. Gwen nodded. "Well, then, don't question the Rift. Your head will spin.

"Look, I know it doesn't seem possible, but the Rift… We don't know the half of what it can do." Jack was addressing both Gwen and me now. "We'll have Tosh run some scans – sorry," he looked at me, "but we have to be absolutely sure you're not an alien or anything…"

"I understand," I assured him.

"Good," he smiled. "So we'll have Tosh scan her, but as long as she comes up human… what choice do we have but to believe her? What she says makes no sense… But, in a way, it's actually the only thing that does."

Gwen nodded, but was still doubtful. "I just don't understand how I can be real in one dimension and mere fiction in another. I am really… real, aren't I?"

I genuinely felt bad for the confusion I had (however inadvertently) caused Gwen. I tried to reassure her as best as I could. "I'm not really an expert on this stuff, but you do seem rather real to me. This is just… an alternate reality from mine. Just as real, only… different. Like Jack said before."

Gwen smiled at me. "And I suppose, I'm not going to get a more definitive answer than that, am I?"

"Most likely not," Jack answered. "So, if we're done pondering the meaning of existence…" He paused and turned to me with a smile. "Let's get you back to the Hub."


	3. Now What?

_Disclaimer: Still don't own anything except Cate. And I don't even really "own" her, as it's not like I get paid or anything. I just created her._

_A/N: It's finally up! I am really very sorry this chapter took so long to post… School got in the way. This is also a rather long chapter, which didn't help matters when I was writing this a couple of paragraphs at a time! But thank you very much for your patience if you've stuck by to read this one! _

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August 4, 2007 (con't)

So that's how I literally got to the Hub – Gwen and Jack (thankfully) believed my admittedly insane-sounding story and brought me from the Cardiff police station to the underground base of Torchwood 3. But my journey to where I am now – on the couch in the Hub, under the big Torchwood sign on the wall, finishing a corn muffin from Ianto Jones, with no one looking at me like I shouldn't be here – was just beginning. And it was a journey that was most certainly not without bumps.

It was easy at first, actually – surprisingly easy. I thought the police would make some fuss that Gwen and Jack, two people who clearly had no prior connection to me, were just taking me away (isn't that a bit like a possible kidnapping?), but apparently they're used to Torchwood playing the "beyond the police" card. PC Lee made a slightly annoyed face as Jack led me out, but otherwise, all the officers just wished me the best when Jack explained that I was under Torchwood's authority now. (I chose to believe that they meant "the best" in finding my parents, or in life in general – not in dealing with Torchwood.)

On the way to the Hub, Gwen called Tosh to let her know the outcome of their latest excursion. "Yeah, it was a young woman, eighteen, American, human, far as we can tell – we're going to bring her in so you can run some scans, though, so if you could set that up? … Thanks, Tosh. Did you happen to check the records and see if there was any increased Rift activity in the last few hours … I don't know, maybe check from about 10 AM on till now … Catherine – that's the girl's name, Catherine Thomas, Cate – she thinks she may have come through the Rift … Well, that's the strange part, she already knew…"

I decided to stop listening there – Tosh must have asked how this random American teenager knew about the Rift, and I wasn't sure I wanted to hear Gwen explain. Even though there really _was_ no other explanation, and even though Gwen and Jack _had _believed me, I still felt like I must be completely crazy to honestly think that I had gone through the Rift into a TV show. It was too embarrassing to hear someone else tell the story, so I decided to become very interested in the road signs we were passing.

Before too long, we arrived at the Roald Dahl Plass. It was strange to think that it had been only a few hours since I'd been there, but yet, not – the Roald Dahl Plass I'd been visiting earlier that day was entirely different from this one, despite the fact that they looked exactly the same. It struck me when I realized that, that even though I _had _to be in an alternate universe, there were no striking differences between this new one and mine; not like when Rose, the Doctor, and Mickey ended up in the alternate universe with the Cybermen. There were no zephyrs in the sky here, no posters for products that didn't exist back home (not to mention that were created by someone who was dead back home, too); there was nothing here to scream at me that I was no longer in my universe, and that Torchwood hadn't really just been very well hidden in my own world the whole time. I would have to convince myself of that all on my own.

Still trying to find whatever positives possible in this bizarre situation, I found myself hoping that Gwen would lead me across the Plass to the nifty perception-filtered lift into the Hub. But, no such luck – I followed Gwen straight past the area where I knew the lift to be (I couldn't see a gaping hole in the ground, but at that point I didn't know if that meant I wasn't able to "perceive" the lift, or if it was simply at ground level). Clearly, we were headed to the visitors' entrance, through the little shop – which I probably should have expected, given that I_ was_, in fact, a visitor.

As if she read my mind, Gwen turned to me at that moment and said, "There's a gift shop just ahead there; you'll find that it's almost always closed, and that its few hours of operation are constantly changing." She smiled. "You know, before I joined Torchwood, I always wondered why that was. Thought it must be terrible for business. I had no reason to think, then, that that was exactly what the people running the store wanted.

"Inside that little shop is an entrance to the Torchwood Hub – although, judging by the look on your face, you already knew that, didn't you?"

I nodded. "Yeah… it's been shown a couple of times on TV. I hadn't thought about people who live in Cardiff actually knowing about that store, though. It makes sense, though, doesn't it? Of course people would notice the store – especially with its strange hours."

"Oh, you have no idea," Gwen laughed. "Poor Ianto – you know who Ianto is, I assume?" I nodded – I most certainly did. "Well, the poor kid deserves a medal for the questions he puts up with whenever the store _is _open. Everybody wanting to know why the shop is closed so often, and why it never seems to be open at the same times two days in a row, and all that. Apparently, the customers can get pretty rude about it."

"Out of curiosity… what _does_ he tell them?"

Gwen chuckled. "That it's just a side-business his family runs. Their main source of income is a sheep farm out in the country."

I stared at her. "Seriously. A sheep farm?"

"Seriously! Don't ask me to explain it; it was Jack's idea…"

"I should have guessed," I laughed as we approached the door to the shop. "Though I can see why the 'family' may need a bit of extra income, if they're dependant on sheep for the rest of it…"

"Precisely," Gwen responded, leading me into the shop. "It's the perfect cover, really; a bit of extra money coming in couldn't hurt a family in that situation, but they also wouldn't need it to be _extremely_ steady. Still, though, we all wondered why it had to be sheep..."

"And, try telling the _customers _that it's a good explanation," came a voice from behind the counter at the side of the store. "Trust me, they don't agree."

"I'm sorry, Ianto," Gwen told the young man the voice belonged to, with a smile. "I'm sure that 'calming down irate customers' wasn't part of the job description for Torchwood." She turned to me. "Cate, this is Ianto Jones. He's our support staff – as you probably know – and is also the maker of the best coffee ever. And Ianto, this is Cate Thomas – I'm sure Tosh explained everything?"

Ianto nodded. "Yes, though neither of us – nor Owen, for that matter – are entirely sure we understand. But don't worry," he said, smiling at me, "we'll do whatever we can to help. You're just going to have answer quite a few questions." He extended his hand to shake mine and added, "It's nice to meet you, Cate." I was glad to hear that he sounded like he really meant it.

"It's nice to meet you, too," I responded. He opened the door to the passageway leading to the main part of the Hub, and Gwen motioned for me to follow her through.

Given the rather shocking and confusing nature of the day up to that point, I hadn't seriously thought about exactly what this all meant. I understood that, as far as I knew, I had traveled through a Rift that shouldn't exist, to an alternate dimension where things I thought were just a TV show were actually reality. I understood that I was being led to the Torchwood Three Hub by none other than Captain Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper, and would undoubtedly meet the rest of the team once there. I _understood_, but I didn't realize that I hadn't yet fully _comprehended _what was going on. It was when I followed Gwen out of the passageway and into the main section of the Hub that it finally really hit me.

I didn't cry. I really thought I would, looking around that huge room and truly comprehending, for the first time, that this was _really happening_. And I most likely would have cried, too, right there in the middle of the Hub, in front of everyone – if I'd had the time. Luckily for me, I had just enough time for everything to sink in before Tosh came over – it was already time to get down to business.

"Hello, you must be Cate," Tosh said with a genuine sweetness. (I was very pleased that thus far, everyone at Torchwood did seem to be quite nice. On the show, even the kindest of the Torchwood employees could be cold at times – I was glad they didn't seem interested in directing this curtness at me. Although, I still had yet to meet Owen.) "I'm Tosh – but erm, I suppose you know that… Gwen explained your situation to Owen, Ianto, and myself over the phone – you might have heard her – though we'd all really like to hear it from you, of course. But I won't ask you to tell the story until everyone's here; I'm sure you don't want to have to repeat yourself three times!

"Now, Gwen and Jack did tell you that we'll need to run some scans on you?" Tosh asked. When I responded positively, she gave me an apologetic smile. "It's nothing personal; but, your story is a strange one, so we just need to make sure…"

"I understand, honestly," I assured her. "If I'd had the experiences with aliens that you've all had, I'd want to be safe and check, too."

"Good, then," Tosh responded. "Now if you'll just head down there, we can get started," she said, motioning toward the medical area below the offices, where (I'd just noticed) Owen was setting up a tray with instruments I couldn't quite make out.

I had _not_ gotten the impression that Owen – or anyone for that matter – was going to be poking at me with what I expected were sharp medical tools. I'm not sure what I had been expecting – futuristic computer scanners, maybe? – but it definitely wasn't a doctor's appointment. I gave Gwen a wary look. "I thought you said _Tosh_ was going to be running the scans?" I asked her quietly.

"She is," Gwen answered. "Tosh takes the data Owen collects and scans it using our computer system."

"Um… oh."

Gwen gave me a reassuring smile. "Not a big fan of medical tests, eh? Don't worry, they're really very standard. You'll see."

Clearly I had no choice in the matter, and I knew better than to argue about the scans I had been so willing to go through just minutes before. So I took a deep breath and walked down the stairs towards the awaiting Owen.

"Hello," Owen greeted me as I climbed on to the examining table. "Well, considering I've heard all about you, and you apparently already know all about me, there's really no need for an introduction, right? So we can just get down to business."

I considered pointing out that "all about" may have been a bit of an overstatement, but decided that it was probably a little early to be running the risk of annoying any of the Torchwood employees. Besides, being a smart-aleck to someone who's about to run medical tests on you seems like a very, very bad idea. So I settled with telling him that I guessed he was right.

"Right then… Okay, we're going to need a blood sample." He put some rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball and rubbed it on my finger. "I'm sure you know how this goes by now," he said as he picked up the needle. I agreed – and tried to avoid showing just how much I hate needles.

Thankfully, though, that finger-prick was the worst of it. He took a full-body X-ray and had to pull out a strand of my hair, but that was it. Gwen was right when she said that the tests would be "standard" – thank goodness!

I walked back up to the office areas, but I wasn't entirely sure what to do with myself now that we were all just waiting for the results to prove I was human. I wandered somewhat uncomfortably over to the couch and sat down – though not without a good deal of fidgeting, in some ironic attempt _not_ to look out of place. Looking around, I saw Tosh taking the samples from Owen and inserting them into some fancy-looking equipment, with Gwen watching intently; I saw Jack in his office, poring over papers I assumed, from the look on his face, to be very important; I saw Ianto coming into the main part of the Hub from the entrance connected to the shop, heading toward Tosh, Gwen, and Owen. The four of them talked for a minute or two, and then Tosh, Owen, and Ianto walked over to me.

Tosh and Ianto sat down on either side of me, while Owen remained standing off to the side, by Ianto. Tosh cleared her throat and said, "So… if you don't mind our asking, we _would _like to hear the full story from you… We only got the outline from Gwen on the phone, after all."

I smiled. "Of course… I don't blame you for being curious," I said, and repeated for them everything I had told Jack and Gwen when they first arrived at the police station. It was actually a bit easier to tell the story the second time – I didn't feel quite as stupid now, telling them about my theory that I had crossed dimensions into a TV show, since two of their colleagues had already accepted my story. Although, I did still feel horribly as very uncomfortable looks spread across their faces when they processed the fact that, where I came from, they technically didn't exist. I knew that I really didn't have a way to answer that sort of existential question.

"And now… here I am," I finished somewhat lamely. I might have sounded a bit sappy with that line, although I didn't mean to, as Tosh and Ianto both gave me somewhat pitying looks. I added quickly, "It could be worse – I could have ended up anywhere, I'd think, going through the Rift. I could have ended up in the Stone Age! Ending up in my own time, in a universe I recognize – in a country that speaks my own language, even! Ending up right near a Torchwood Hub… In a twisted sort of way, I did get lucky."

"Well, that's the best way to look at things, I suppose," Tosh said with a small smile. Ianto nodded his agreement, but Owen just glanced around the room uncomfortably. I chose to think that meant that he agreed, too – he just didn't want to admit his sentimentality.

Just then, I noticed Gwen and Jack (who must have come down from his office while I was telling the other three my story) walking toward us. Gwen was holding a small stack of computer print-outs, which I guessed to be the results of my scans. Based on the way she was grinning at me, I also guessed that they had determined that I was human (not that I really expected anything different – I know I'm not an alien! – but still, I hadn't wanted to count on anything.)

"Great news," Gwen said to me as she sat across from me, on the edge of the table in front of the couch. "Scans show you're a human – though I'm sure that doesn't surprise you. Now, we just – "

"Hold on, just a minute," Owen interrupted. "It's great that she's human, really, it is. But am I the only one who's wondering how exactly that proves that she isn't a threat? She still knows things that she shouldn't – she knows about us, about the Rift… So great, she's human. How do we know she's not a very skilled computer-hacker-type human who found a way to break into our systems and wants to… I don't know, expose us to the world or something? Destroy us from the inside out?"

Gwen shot daggers at Owen from her glare. "She's an eighteen-year-old girl. She's lost. Does she look to you to be an evil computer genius who wants to destroy us?"

"No, of course she doesn't." He turned to me. "It's nothing personal, love, but," he turned back to Gwen, "you know, Carys didn't look particularly threatening." He looked at Tosh. "Nor did Mary." He addressed Jack next. "I just want to know if there's a way to prove that she travelled through the Rift. That's all. I know that that's still not necessarily a guarantee that she has no ulterior motives, but if we can prove she came through the Rift, I'll stop being picky."

Gwen still looked upset, but she, Tosh, and Ianto all appeared to understand where Owen was coming from. I have to admit, I did too.

Jack also seemed to agree with Owen's suggestion. "Owen's right," Jack started. "But the thing is, I don't think there _is_ a way to prove that someone's travelled through the Rift. We've never seen a case yet where the trip affects the chemical makeup or physical appearance – or anything – of the object or person in question. Unfortunately," he gave me a sad look, "that does present a bit of an issue for you, if we don't know we can trust you."

I'd love to say that the solution came to me immediately, and that I didn't panic at all as Jack said that to me. But I can't – I most definitely experienced a moment of sheer terror. I knew I did _not_ want Torchwood unsure of whether or not they could trust me – that sounded like an extremely unsafe situation to be in.

Thankfully, though, that only lasted a moment or two. Then I remembered – I thought I had come through the Rift, and maybe I did; but, I _definitely_ crossed dimensions (how else to explain winding up in a TV show?!), and in order to do that, I _definitely_ had to go through the Void. Conveniently, I also remembered that there was, in fact, a way to prove that something had travelled through the Void.

"Could I make a suggestion?" I asked tentatively. Confident though I was that I had a solution to the problem, my voice still had a trace of the panic I had just experienced.

Jack nodded. "Go ahead."

I took a deep breath. "Well… Like I said, I think I crossed dimensions to get here, right? Because where I come from, this is all a TV show, so if it's all real now, it has to be a different dimension." I paused as they processed that. "I also assume that I went through the Rift, since I know I was near that back home, when I ended up here. And I still think I probably did go through the Rift, since I was near it, but… in order to cross into a different dimension, you have to go through this thing called the Void. Well, it's not a thing, really, it's the absence of 'thing'… It's nothingness. Absolutely nothing." I looked at Jack. "At least, that's what… someone who should know said." I didn't want to say "the Doctor", because I wasn't entirely sure just how much the rest of the Torchwood employees knew about the Doctor, or Jack's involvement with him.

Jack nodded at me – I could tell he understood. So, I continued. "I don't know how or why you go through it when you cross dimensions, but you do. And whenever you go through the Void for any reason, you end up with… I'm not sure, residue or something left on you. And you can see that leftover stuff left on whatever went through the Void. 'Void stuff', it was called.

"My point is, if I really did come from a different dimension to get here, I travelled through the Void. Maybe the Rift too, but definitely the Void. I don't know how to prove that I went through the Rift, and neither do you, apparently, but I can prove that I went through the Void – if any of you have 3-D glasses?"

"Um… if any of us have… what?" Gwen asked, looking genuinely puzzled.

"Uh… 3-D glasses. You know… those chintzy white things, one lens is red cellophane and one is blue cellophane… they come from cereal boxes, or comic books?" I realized that that really did sound rather ridiculous. (Somehow, it sounded a lot more convincing when the Doctor said it.) I appealed to Jack. "Please, I know it sounds crazy, asking for 3-D glasses to prove that I went through complete nothingness… but that man who should know, that's how he explained it. To Rose, Rose and Mickey and Rose's mom. They had Void stuff on them – well, Rose and Mickey did – because they'd crossed dimensions before – this was after you'd um… left. It was on the show."

"It's worth a try, isn't it?" Ianto asked. "I mean, it seems easy enough to disprove. If you look at her with… the 3-D glasses… and she doesn't look any different than without them, then you know she was making it up. If she does look different, then she must have been telling the truth."

"I agree," Jack said. He actually gave me a small smile as he said, "And I just so happen to have a pair of 3-D glasses in my office." He headed up the stairs to get them.

The Torchwood crew exchanged confused glances. After a few moments, Owen asked, "Why the _Devil _has he got 3-D glasses in his office?" He looked at Ianto. "Ianto, you file everything we get in; besides which, we all know you and Jack – " another dagger-filled glare from Gwen cut him off – "well, you get on well. Point is, did Jack ever tell you that he had 3-D glasses? Or why?"

Ianto nodded. "He did, actually. He did have me file them as official equipment; I remember, because it was right after we got back from the Himalayas, and at first I thought it was a joke, and I thought it was a bit disrespectful for him to be playing jokes on us after everything he'd just put us through. But he said he was entirely serious… he didn't tell me what they're for, he just said to file them."

"But you always have to describe the items we file… what did he have you say for the 3-D glasses?" Tosh asked.

"It was one sentence, and it seemed… like it meant something more than it was saying," Ianto answered. "What was it… Something along the lines of, 'The better to see you with my dear, according to John Smith.' I don't remember it exactly, but it had to do with seeing, and it was the Big Bad Wolf… and some guy called John Smith told him, I guess. Whoever he is. Honestly, I wondered if Jack knew exactly what they were for himself."

I made a mental note to talk to Jack about that at some point, if he'd let me. I wondered, too, if Jack actually knew what the glasses were meant for. I figured the Doctor (obviously the John Smith mentioned) must have told him to get a pair during the year that never was (which would explain why the conversation was never aired on the show); but, I wasn't sure if Jack had made up the riddle-like description after the Doctor told him the purpose of the glasses, or if the Doctor had simply left Jack with that riddle as their only explanation. Most intriguing, though, was the Bad Wolf reference. I'm not even sure if Jack knows enough about the Bad Wolf for it to be anything more than a coincidence if he came up with the description – but the Doctor certainly knows, and if he made up the description he might have it there for a reason. Either way, though, it's certainly strange. 

Jack soon returned, 3-D glasses in hand. "Well," he said, "let's find out what's going on here, shall we?" He put on the glasses – and gasped. "Woah!" He whipped the glasses on and off a couple of times. "Ha ha! Not to be amused by your strange situation or anything, but that actually does look kind of cool. You're covered in little… greenish… dotty… stuff."

"Eloquently put, sir," Ianto quipped, quietly enough that Jack didn't hear him. (Tosh did, though, which earned him a soft poke.)

After the rest of the team had had a look through the glasses (apparently the "greenish dotty stuff" was too intriguing to pass up a glance at), Jack pocketed them and sighed. "Well," he said to me, "good news is, you're telling the truth. Bad news is… now we have to figure out what to do with you."

Everyone was quiet for a moment, not quite sure what to say next. Then Owen stood up and spoke. "Well, it would seem that we should do what we normally do with anyone who finds out about Torchwood." He looked at me. "Once again, it's really nothing personal, love, but we can't have random people milling about Cardiff knowing that there's this alien-catching agency hidden below the city. It's not safe – for us, or that random person. We're just gonna have to Ret-Con you, Cate."

"I wouldn't be so quick on that decision, Owen," Jack said, rather deliberately. Both Owen and Gwen gave him a look that clearly screamed, "are you CRAZY?!", while Tosh and Ianto merely looked perplexed. I'm not quite sure what _my_ face looked like at this point, but if I had to guess I'd say it was completely flabbergasted. Within about ten seconds, I'd gone from being extremely displeased at the notion of losing my memory, extremely confused as to why Jack seemed to think I should keep it, and above all extremely pleased that I may get to keep my memory after all. Granted the team didn't choose now to have another let's-all-revolt-against-Jack moment, anyway.

Owen and Gwen seemed to be quite ready to lead such a revolt, but luckily Jack caught them before they could start arguing. "Just hear me out. Think about it. Let's say we Ret-Con her. When do we go back to? To right before she met us? That can't work, because she'll still remember us from TV, and think about finding us all over again."

"Then go back to before she heard about the TV program," Owen suggested.

Jack shook his head. "That won't work, either." He gestured at me. "Look at her. Here's a young, sweet, pretty young woman, right? Got her whole life ahead of her. Can any of you come up with a single good reason for a girl like her to have absolutely no friends? No family? No history at all? Sure, we can give her fake records and make it seem like she's lived here her whole life – we may even be able to come up with an excuse for the American accent. But what would ever explain why the teachers at the school we tell her she went to don't recognize her? Why the people at the orphanage we'd have to tell her she grew up in have never seen her before? Anyone else we've had to Ret-Con had a life here before they met us. Cate doesn't. That makes her extremely difficult to Ret-Con. Unless you lot have a way to convince the whole of Cardiff – maybe even the whole of Great Britain – to make this one, single girl think that she's lived here since birth?"

It was Gwen who broke the silence this time. "But what will we do, then, Jack? Owen's right – it's not safe for her. That's why I wanted her Ret-Conned in the first place! What happens if anyone who's looking for us ever finds out that there's this poor young girl who knows about us? A _lot _about us! She's _eighteen_, Jack! She's too young to have to deal with this! We can't just send her off to live on her own in a city she doesn't know when she has a secret that big!"

"Who said anything about leaving her on her own?" Jack asked. "I was thinking… she could work for us."

"_WHAT!?_" Gwen and Owen yelled in tandem. "No way, Jack," Gwen continued. "No way. She's too young!"

"In her defense," Ianto spoke up, "I wasn't all that much older than her when I started working for Torchwood One."

Gwen started to protest, but Jack interrupted. "Exactly. And I wasn't planning on having her go out on jobs with us. You're right – she's too young for that. But I was thinking… that maybe Ianto wouldn't mind an assistant?"

Ianto nodded. "No arguments from me, sir. In fact, I've been thinking that I wouldn't mind an assistant for some time now."

Gwen looked at me. I could see genuine concern in her eyes. "You've seen what we do. Would you be comfortable working here?"

Though I wanted to simply yell, "_YES I'd like to work for Torchwood!!!_" as an answer, I decided to actually carefully think about my response. "Honestly, I'd love to. I understand that it's dangerous and very serious business, but… well I really don't expect Ianto to attack me with a coffee machine or anything. I don't know how comfortable I'd be going out, not on dangerous jobs – I don't know if I could shoot anything, even in self-defense… but I think I can handle filing. Or cleaning. Or coffee making." I looked at Ianto. "Or whatever it is you'd like me to help with." I turned back to Gwen. "Really, this is a great job for me. I've always been interested in aliens… The chance to work here is incredible. I would love to be a part of this, yeah."

Jack, Tosh, and Ianto all smiled. Gwen sighed, but then gave me a smile herself. "Well, then, looks like I've got no choice but to back down. Just… promise me that you'll be careful?"

I smiled back. "I promise."

"And don't worry, Gwen, I promise not to attack her with a coffee machine," Ianto added.

"Well, Catherine Thomas," Jack said, extending his hand, "welcome to Torchwood."

I shook his hand. "Thank you very much, Captain!"

"Unfortunately, there is still one small problem," Jack continued. "Where are you going to live?"

"We are not, under any circumstances, sending her to the shelter we had Emma and Diane stay at," Gwen answered quickly. "Too dodgy… Emma had Diane to watch out for her, but there's no one like that for Cate." She paused. "You know what? I took Emma in. I wouldn't mind taking Cate in, as well."

"Oh, really, you don't have to do that!" I exclaimed. "I don't want to be a bother or anything."

Gwen just smiled. "Trust me, it's not a problem. Besides, I highly doubt you've got the money in your wallet to buy your own apartment?"

She had a point there. The only money I had access to here was what I had in my wallet – which was nowhere near enough for an apartment. It was barely enough for one night in a respectable hotel! "Um… no, no, I don't," I answered.

"So there we go. You'll have to stay somewhere, so don't you think it'd be less 'bothersome' to stay with the person whose offering?" Gwen asked.

"Suppose so," I responded with a smile. "Thank you so much, Gwen. I promise, once I've made enough to live on my own, I'll let you have your house back!"

Gwen laughed. "That sounds like a plan!" Then she turned to Jack. "Just one thing, though. I should like to warn Rhys this time. And tell him whatever of the truth about her that I can. I don't want another row, like what happened after he found out about Emma… Is there any chance we can find somewhere else for her to stay tonight? Just so Rhys and I can work this out properly."

"Of course," Jack nodded. "Tosh, is there any chance you've got room to take her in for the night?"

Tosh shook her head. "I've got room, sure, but unfortunately it's unusable. My whole living room is in shambles right now – it's being repainted. I'm really sorry about that," she continued, turning towards me. "It's horrible timing!"

"That's fine! It's not your fault," I answered. I looked at Jack. "I'm sure there's a motel or something in the area I could stay at for the night?"

"Well, there technically is," Jack began. "But I'd like to be able to get you back here easily tomorrow, and the only places around here that would give you an easy commute are either ridiculously expensive or really, really shady." He sighed. "However… you could always stay here. At the Hub. We haven't really got a bedroom for you, but I've got some extra blankets and a mattress. It ain't luxury, but it's safe and doesn't involve you trekking half-way across Cardiff to get to work tomorrow."

"How come the fact that_ I_ have to trek half-way across Cardiff never seemed to bother you?" Owen interjected bitterly.

Jack didn't even bother looking at Owen. "Because you're an adult who's lived in Cardiff all his life. You know the city. She doesn't. I don't want her getting lost," he answered, quite matter-of-factly. Addressing me again, Jack asked, "So, what do you say? Stay here, or would you mind wending your way through the city tomorrow morning?"

For a moment, I wondered if maybe they'd all be more impressed with me if I said that I wouldn't mind finding my way through the city by myself. Thankfully, before I answered, I realized that they might be impressed with me _now_, but that would fade pretty quickly tomorrow morning when I inevitably was very, very late after getting very, very lost. (I know my sense of direction. It's pretty much nonexistent.) "If it's not too much of a hassle, I think I should probably stay here."

Jack smiled. "No trouble at all," he answered. "As for the rest of you," he continued, "I think we're pretty much done for today. It's a bit early, but you guys can head on home."

The others said their goodbyes and began to file out of the Hub. As they left, Jack turned to me and said, "Well, why don't you and I see what kind of room we can make for you for the night?"

And that's where my story began. That's how I got here, and how I came to be sitting on this couch, with no one looking at me like I don't belong here. After all… I _do_ belong here. Or at least I will, once successfully complete my first day as a Torchwood employee!


	4. Week One

A/N: Once again, sorry for the ridiculously long amount of time between chapters… And thank you very, very much if you're still reading this . I don't want to jinx things by saying this, but I think I've finally planned out pretty much the rest of this thing, at least generally, so hopefully there won't be quite this much time between chapters now. Thanks for your patience!

Also, just in case anyone is curious and/or bothered by this – especially now that the second season has started (yay!) – this story is taking place a couple of weeks after Jack got back to Torchwood (obviously, as he's there in my story), and will end a couple of weeks before Capt. John showed up. I'm taking a bit of license there, I think, since there really wasn't much time between those two things in the show… but that's the wonder of fan fiction.

One last note… This is sort of a filler/fluff chapter. Yeah, I know, all that time and this is all I put up. Sorry! But I realized that I needed to explain some of this stuff anyway, and if just stuck it at the beginning of the next chapter, it would have taken even longer for me to post new material. So I figured I'd post a shorter, fluffier chapter as a segue before the real stuff starts up in full force again. If you like this, yay! If you don't, don't worry – it won't all be like this.

Oh yeah, and I still don't own anything. The people who do are brilliant, though, and writing this has made me respect them even more.

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August 31, 2007

I know it's been a while since I last wrote… But actually, it's not been as long as it seems. Turns out, the two dimensions weren't completely parallel – I left my dimension on August 3rd, but arrived in this one on August 26th. Without actually experiencing those twenty-three days. Huh. Ah, well, skipping twenty-three days is far from the worst that could have happened. (Yes, I'm still counting my blessings.)

Anyway, I still expected – working for Torchwood and all – that I'd have something crazy and exciting to write about pretty much every day. But you know what? Torchwood isn't as dramatic and eventful as the show makes it seem. There are actually _quiet_ days around here! My appearance was the only major occurrence in the past two weeks (two weeks and five days, now). I mean, there's been the occasional Weevil sighting (there's quite a few captured ones in the Hub now… oh joy), and there was that "UFO" this morning (that's in quotes because obviously we figured out what it was, so it's not really an _unidentified _flying object, now is it?), but they were friendly aliens who just got a little lost. Jack sent them directions and they were quite happy to be on their way again. You know, without trying to destroy the world – not even Cardiff!

All the same, I figured I should bring this up-to-date – just because there haven't been any Earth-shattering happenings since I've arrived, it's not like I've been sitting here doing nothing! Up until today, I'd basically been taking over Ianto's old position – yes, old. While Jack was gone, he wound up with a lot more responsibilities – going out with the team and all that. However, he was still the general support staff, too; cleaning and organizing and record-keeping… No _wonder_ he said he'd been thinking that he needed an assistant! 

I don't really mind the coffee-and-tea-making (though note to self: if Owen ever calls you "tea girl", pour said tea over his head), and due to the lack of violent aliens finding their way into the Hub, I haven't had anything really nasty to clean up yet. Even bringing the food up to Myfanwy – she's the pterodactyl, by the way – isn't too bad. She's really quite domesticated; it's like refilling the bowl for a dog. A really, really big dog. With really sharp teeth. But I've been assured that she's really very gentle – as long as you don't get her angry (or get yourself covered in that special sauce stuff…). And she seems to like me, so I guess I'm fine.

(Oh, my goodness, listen to me. I'm talking about all of this like it's perfectly normal, like anyone might live their life this way! I've only been here five days! I'm not sure if I should be proud of how quickly I acclimated, or scared that I might be forgetting what it's like to live a normal life way too soon. I'll have to be careful of that…)

Despite not minding simply taking over Ianto's old position, I was still excited to get my first official assignment today. It made me feel a bit more like a real employee, instead of someone that they were keeping around because they just didn't quite know what to do with me. I'm still the support staff, of course, but now, instead of going to work in the gift shop when I've got nothing left to do (either opening it or relieving Ianto of his post), my job is to go down to the files and use the 3-D glasses to look at all the alien objects we've got stored. (That might sound like a quick job, but you should see the amount of stuff we've got down there! Torchwood Three had a lot already, but then when Torchwood One got destroyed, everything that got salvaged was sent to Cardiff.) See, ever since the Doctor told Jack about Rose being stuck in a different dimension, he wondered about how exactly those different dimensions work. However, he wasn't really sure how to go about investigating that – he didn't want to start poking at the Rift (especially when he didn't even know if the Rift would have anything to do with it), and it's not like he knew anyone who came from a different dimension that he could ask. Not until I showed up, anyway. Granted, I'm pretty much no help – I haven't the foggiest idea how precisely I wound up here – but I _was_ able to explain about the Void and the 3-D glasses. So Jack put me in charge of examining all the alien artifacts we have on file to see if any of them have gone through the Void – if they have, travel between different dimensions may not be so impossible after all. I mean, obviously I'm here, but I could have been a bizarre fluke, where the Rift and the Void happened to work together. If other things have come through the Void, though… Torchwood may be on to something major.

Unfortunately, however, thus far not a single alien artifact has any Void stuff on it. But it was only my first day on this job, and there's plenty left to examine!

It may have been my first day with this new assignment, but today also marked the end of my first week as a Torchwood employee. (I should qualify that, I suppose – I've worked at Torchwood for five days, which is one full _work_ week. Of course, we're always on call, weekends and wee hours of the morning included, but I've worked one Monday-through-Friday week.) Therefore, Jack and Gwen decided that we should all go out for dinner, to celebrate. I know I've seen the team go out for dinner on the show, but still, I was kind of surprised by their invitation. I don't know, I guess I just didn't see the Torchwood team as quite the types to celebrate a new employee's first week – especially a rather uneventful first week. But all the same, as I was finishing up cleaning the souvenir shop (which is to be done every Friday), all of a sudden Jack poked his head from around the "door frame" from the tunnel leading to the Hub.

"Which do you prefer, Chinese or Italian?"

I just blinked at him. "Um… Sorry?"

Jack smiled. "For dinner. Chinese or Italian?"

"Oh! It doesn't really matter, honestly, I like both. Whatever you guys get is fine with me." I figured they were ordering in, and I didn't want to cause any sort of trouble as such a new employee. I would prefer Italian, but I'd always seen them get Chinese (except for the pizza, of course), and I didn't want to make waves.

But Jack just smiled some more. "No, no, see, you have to choose. It only makes sense that the person being celebrated picks the place to go." I must have looked confused – which I was – because he chuckled and gave a better explanation. "Gwen and I thought it might be nice to bring you out to dinner to celebrate your first week here – and the rest of the team agreed. We've all been very impressed with the way you handled everything, but we know this has to have been one hell of a week." He was right about that. Work at Torchwood was calm, but the mere fact that I was working at Torchwood at all (not to mention the circumstances under which I'd wound up there) was something else. "We thought you deserved a bit of real, completely-un-worked-related fun." He was right about that, too. I mean, I'd gone out shopping on Monday and Tuesday with Gwen and Ianto, respectively, but both trips were out of necessity. (I went clothes-and-makeup-shopping with Gwen – considering that all I had with me was my purse and the clothes I was wearing when I arrived – and work-effects-shopping with Ianto – every Torchwood employee needs a laptop, and mine was sitting comfortably in a hotel in Wales in a different dimension.)

So I happily told him that, in that case, I like Italian, and thanked him very much for the idea. He nodded and told me it was no trouble, and that we'd be leaving after regular closing time. He headed back into the Hub, and I finished cleaning the shop with the biggest smile I've had on my face since arriving here.

Then I sat down to write this. (Yes, I keep my diary with me – my purse is big enough to fit a journal, and I want to have it on hand at all times, to make sure I don't miss anything.) I don't know when I'll be done tonight, so I figured just in case I'll be going straight to bed, I ought to catch this up now. But it's almost closing time, and thus almost time to go out for my dinner with the Torchwood team. With my colleagues. And you know what? I think it's safe to say that I'm going out to dinner with my friends.


	5. Please Mind the Children

_A/N: So I officially fail at quick updates… I'm sorry. Again. But in my defense, I did put this one up more quickly than the last one!_

_Also, I realize that this chapter is very… explain-y. Sorry about that, too. This was my first attempt at setting up an "episode", and I'm not sure that it worked as well as it could. Constructive criticism (or compliments, if you actually do think it works!) would be very much appreciated! That way, I can make the set-up for the next story line better . (I also promise that the next chapter will be back to normal.)_

_Lastly, many thanks to __Tamen no Sabaku__, who pointed out to me that it isn't a souvenir shop, but an info center. Oops _

_And as always, I don't own anything. I made up Cate, but that's all._

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September 4, 2007

I don't know how far I'll manage to get in this entry – there's all sorts of stuff happening here right now, and I've only just managed to steal away to write it down. They may need me again at any moment – or, you know, I might be dead at any moment. But I need to get as much of this down now as I can; I can't risk missing a single detail. See, there is an episode of Torchwood going on right in front of me. No, not in front of me; that makes it sound like I'm not involved, which I am. So I guess it's going on around me. Around me, and… including me, too. The point is, what happened today – well, actually, what's been happening for just over a week, but we only really noticed it today – and really, "happened" isn't quite right, since it's not over yet… Ok. This isn't working, so I'll just start from the beginning of all this. But the main thing I was trying to say was that today, for the first time since I arrived, I got to experience what I always saw in the TV show. All the dangerous, action-packed, "oh God oh God we're all gonna die" kind of Torchwood stuff. So much for the quiet of the past two weeks.

Although, like I said, in a way all of this has been going on since the day after I arrived here. Even worse, I actually noticed it – I just didn't know it at the time. As I was having breakfast that first morning in the Hub, I noticed that Jack (or maybe Ianto) had left the newspaper on the table. Still feeling a bit out of place at that point, I picked it up more out of the need to _do_ something (besides eating) than the desire to read it. However, one headline caught my eye – to the extent that I actually reacted to it out loud.

"Oh, that's awful," I said.

Ianto gave me a puzzled look. "Do you not like the muffin after all?"

"What? Oh, no, no, the muffin's great," I answered. (It really was, too.) "I meant this." I turned the paper around to face Jack and Ianto.

"Young boy dies suddenly in home," Jack read the headline aloud. "A five-year-old boy was found dead in his bedroom Tuesday morning. He was in great health and there was no sign of a break-in. Initial autopsy reports show that he died of natural causes." Jack sighed. "That's a shame." Ianto nodded.

Sad though it was, we didn't really think anything of it. It was unfortunate, sure, but we didn't think it was anything that concerned Torchwood. After all, there wasn't anything about it that screamed "ALIEN INVOLVEMENT!". It just seemed like your average freak accident.

I suppose that if Jack, Ianto, or I had seen the second article, two mornings ago, we may have started to get curious. But only Tosh noticed the second article – detailing an identical case (except that this time the "victim" was a six-year-old girl) – and she didn't mention anything about it. So the emerging pattern escaped the Torchwood team.

Until about 5:00 this morning, anyway. That's when Jack got a call from the police. Another little girl had been found dead (Annie Morgan was her name), but this time there was a slight difference. She was younger (only 4 years old), and still had a baby monitor in her room. Apparently, Annie called for her parents in the middle of the night, saying she was scared. Her parents figured that Annie had had a bad dream, so Mrs. Morgan got out of bed to go soothe her little girl. By the time Mrs. Morgan reached her daughter's room, Annie was already dead by her light switch. Needless to say, the Morgans quickly called the police – especially since there had already been two publicized reports similar to theirs.

It should really be handed to the police that they called in Torchwood as quickly as they did this morning. They don't like calling us in – which I suppose I can understand; I mean, I'm sure they'd rather handle the case themselves than hand it over to a small group of alien-catchers. The police probably think we're crazy, talking about aliens… But whatever they think about us, they did call us in pretty speedily this morning. For one thing, it was the third case like this that they'd had in under two weeks; for another, this time there was a strong hint that something strange had been going on in the room before the little girl died. Something had scared her, but there was, again, no sign of a break-in or even an attempted break-in. Things were looking strange and the police were at a stand-still… So it was time to call in Torchwood.

And so, at 5:30 this morning, I was woken by Gwen telling me it was time to go to work. All sorts of things were running through my mind – not least of which that the world might be ending again (… how often does anyone get to say _that!?_), since it was definitely usually brighter than this when it was time to get up. But as I groggily went to throw some clothes on and grab a breakfast bar for the road, Gwen filled me in. Jack had just called and explained the whole situation; we were meeting at the Hub to gather some equipment, then heading over to the scene of the latest death.

Once at the Hub, we were all briefed more specifically on the case – Ianto had pulled up the articles about the last two deaths, and Jack explained what the police had told him. (Thus far, the press hadn't found out about this latest case – and according to Jack, he had made it quite clear to the police that they were to keep the press from mentioning a single thing about this story until Torchwood had finished the job.) Owen gathered some very high-tech medical equipment, Tosh organized her myriad scanners, Gwen grabbed the printed-off copies of the newspaper articles, and Jack picked up the little bottle of RetCon ("Just in case – you never can be too careful," he said to my puzzled look). With that – and a command to Ianto to go through old press releases and see if there were ever any other cases similar to this – the four of them headed out the door to the awaiting S.U.V.

Leaving me to just stand there, feeling confused. I had no idea what _I _was supposed to do now; Ianto had gotten a job to do while stuck at the Hub, but I had just been left out entirely. I must have looked as confused as I felt – or maybe Ianto just understood the situation, since he had often been in my place – because Ianto smiled apologetically at me and said, "I suppose you should just start examining the files for Void stuff, then. I promise I'll keep you informed of anything major that goes on."

I smiled and thanked him, then headed down to the files. A bit despondently, I might add, though I tried not to let Ianto see. I knew from the start what my job at Torchwood was going to entail – they'd made it quite clear – but still, having to miss out on the first major assignment of my time here brought it all home a lot more starkly than their words could have done. I tried to count my blessings – after all, I was sitting comfortably in the relative safety of the Torchwood Hub, as opposed to being out on the field – but I couldn't shake that feeling that I really wanted to be a part of all this, somehow. I at least wanted to be up with Ianto, where I could hear any messages coming in from the team; at least then I'd know what was going on as soon as it happened.

Thankfully, I was only down with the records for about ten minutes before Ianto paged me. "Would you mind giving me a hand up here with the press releases? The team just sent me some data they want me to start building a case file with, so I can start comparing it with all our other case files. But I can't do that and search for old press releases at the same time. At least, not whilst doing both jobs well."

I was very glad that it was just a page, and that Ianto therefore couldn't see how happy I was to get the chance to really help out. I told him I'd be right up and practically bounded back to the main area of the Hub – managing to make myself look perfectly calm and collected before Ianto could see me, of course. (Though I suspect he had an idea of how happy he'd just made me – he gave me one of those smiles where you just _know_ that the other person understands something about you, but also understands that you don't want it explicitly stated, so they just let it go. But they just _have_ to give you that look, making you quite embarrassed because you _know _that they know, so they may as well just start a conversation with you about it, for all the "secrecy" is worth. … I'm getting off-topic. Anyway…)

As I sat down at the computer housing Torchwood's ridiculously massive database, Ianto filled me in on what the team had discovered. "Gwen brought the articles covering the other two cases to compare them with this one; turns out that all three children were found dead in their bedroom by their light switches. All three light switches were in the 'on' position, but the light was off. Well, rather, burned out; according to Tosh's scans, this light bulb from the Morgans' burned out from some sort of huge power overdose. Meanwhile, Owen's discovered that little Annie died of natural causes, just like the others, except that it was her brain that gave out first – the doctors working on the other cases had listed cardiac arrest as the cause of death. They're heading over to the other flats now, and then to the hospital morgue, to see if the same is true with the other cases."

It seemed to me like there might be a simple explanation to all this. "Do you think these kids just got electrocuted or something? I mean, if they were all by their light switches, and the lights were burned out by a power surge…"

Ianto nodded. "I suppose it's a possibility, but don't forget, none of these kids were injured. Medical examiners can usually tell when a person's been electrocuted."

"Oh. That's true, isn't it?" So much for my possible moment of brilliance.

"Yeah… Besides, we don't even know if the findings from this case are the same in the other two yet. They haven't sent me that data; they're probably only just getting to the first flat."

"Also true." Then I sensed a possible problem. "Ianto, what if the other families have thrown out the light bulbs? Or if it's too late to be able to get any results from them – or from the bodies?"

"They thought about that," Ianto nodded. "Horrible as this is going to sound, if that's the case, we're just going to have to wait until there's another death – if there is another death. There's nothing they can really do about the time, but they're hoping that at least the families have been so overwhelmed that they don't want to change a thing about their poor child's room."

"Not even the burned-out light bulbs," I realized.

"Not even the burned-out light bulbs," Ianto agreed.

"Right," I continued. "So what is it exactly that you need me to do?

My new job was to take over his old one (seems to happen to us a lot), searching through old newscasts, newspaper articles, etc, to see if anything like this had ever happened before, anywhere in the world. Basically, the computer was set to catch any article that contained certain key terms and/or phrases, designated by the team to fit the situation. It was more complicated than that, of course – otherwise, it'd be pulling up far more articles than would actually be useful (words like "electricity" and "death" are pretty common, after all) – but Ianto said he never entirely understood the finer workings of the database's search system; that was Tosh's area of expertise, and he just did as instructed. Thus far, the database hadn't come up with any articles (other than the ones from the case we were investigating), but the search _had_ only been going for about 10 minutes. So I sat by the screen, waiting for the database to pull up an article for me; when it did, I was to skim over the article, to see if it really did have anything to do with our current problem. Meanwhile, Ianto sat at a nearby table and started correlating all the data the team had sent back to the Hub into a case file.

Now, I always knew that Torchwood had some extremely powerful tech – the most cutting-edge stuff you could find on this planet today, mixed with very highly advanced alien stuff. Regardless, I was quite shocked when searching the _entire_ database took all of 56 minutes. And that's including about 15 minutes (in total) of me skimming over the articles it pulled up, and deciding whether or not to print them. In the end, the database gave me twelve articles, but after closer inspection, only seven seemed to match our current case. There were three deaths in Waterbury, Connecticut over a week and a half in February of 1936 (it was nice to see my old country again, but I wish that America could have been involved in something happy), and four deaths in Wellington, New Zealand over two weeks in November of 1978. And of course, the three deaths in Cardiff in late August/early September of 2007.

I scooted the chair over from the computer to the table where Ianto was sitting and handed him the printed out articles. "I don't know if this is good news or bad news, but I found two other times something like this happened."

Ianto took the papers and leafed through the stories. "It's certainly helpful, at any rate. The more information, the better. I'll add these into the case file."

"How's that going, by the way?" I asked.

Ianto sighed. "Pretty well… We don't have all that much information yet – although Jack's been sending new data from the scans done at the other two flats for the past twenty minutes or so – but at least that means that attempting to put this thing together isn't entirely overwhelming."

"Info from the other flats? So the families didn't throw out the light bulbs, I guess?"

"Doesn't seem it," Ianto answered. "And it also appears that the situation was the same each time. The bulbs at the other flats burned out due to a larger-than-average power surge."

I nodded. "Well that's… good, in a way. At least there's a trend."

"And a trend brings us one step closer to solving the case. When there's no trend, it's hard to decide the next move. At least now we know it's all connected, somehow. We still don't know what's going on, but, you know…"

"One step at a time?" I asked.

"Precisely. Besides," he added with a smile, "asking for anything more than that would just defy Torchwood precedent." He went back to shuffling through the articles, trying to figure out where to add them into the growing manila folder housing the case file.

"So, uh…" I started tentatively. "Do you need any more help, or should I just, uh, go back to the records?"

Ianto looked up with an apologetic smile. "Erm, I am pretty much all set now… I'm sorry."

"No, no, that's fine, I pretty much figured that would be the case," I answered truthfully. "Glad I could help out for at least a little while!"

"Yes, thanks for that, you did make my job considerably easier. I'll let you know if anything else major comes up."

"Thanks, Ianto," I smiled. I wished him luck on the case file, and headed back to –

Ok, Ianto just paged me to say that the team just got back to the Hub, and we're having a meeting to discuss everything they found. I was pretty much done with the entry anyway; basically I've been going through the files some more (and writing this, of course!) for the 45 minutes or so since I finished with the database. There'll be more after the meeting!


	6. New Developments

_A/N: As always, thank you to everyone who's reading and/or reviewing! I honestly didn't expect people to be so interested… I know that diary-format stories aren't always hugely popular. This is my first-ever story and I was writing it just for fun; I only decided to post it on a whim. I'm quite flattered by all the positivity! So thank you!_

Also as always, Cate is the only part of this story (besides the specific plot – oh, and the alien race in this one) that belongs to me. Everything else is the BBC's, as far as I know.

Enjoy!

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September 4, 2007 (con't)

Well, things are about to get… interesting. Hopefully this isn't going to be one of those, "Be careful what you wish for," situations.

When Ianto paged me about the meeting, I once again bounded to the main area of the Hub (and once again collected myself in time to not look over-eager). Sure enough, I saw the team was settling in around the big table in the meeting room. Jack waved me over, and I slipped into a seat on the end, next to Tosh.

"Ok. So, what have we got?" Jack asked once everyone had sat down.

Ianto spoke up first. "While you were out, I organized all the data into a complete case file, and I asked Cate to give me a hand by searching the database for old news clips. Between what she found – there was a similar situation in America in 1936, and one in New Zealand in 1978 - and what you guys sent back here, I had enough information to compare the characteristics of these attacks with all the alien profiles we have on file."

Jack nodded. "And?"

"I think I may have come up with a match," Ianto responded. He leafed through a couple of the papers in the case file. "It's a species that Torchwood hasn't had any personal contact with, but we monitored the two previous cases. Apparently, Torchwood thought the deaths in the American case were a little strange, so they looked more deeply into it when it happened again in New Zealand. They had no matching information in their database at that point, but after a bit of research – and some talks with U.N.I.T. – they matched the attacks with an alien race that U.N.I.T had some data on. No one knows this species' actual name, since U.N.I.T. wasn't able to translate their speech patterns; though they had apparently been previously assured by one of their scientific advisors that the species was, in fact, intelligent. This same scientific advisor told them the species was commonly called the Electrites, since they live in and feed on electricity. How this man knew all that, I have no idea, but Torchwood trusted his word – and U.N.I.T.'s – then, so I don't see why we shouldn't now." (Personally, I had a hunch as to how this "man" might have known… but seeing as it wasn't really important to the topic at hand, I decided not to mention it.)

"What exactly happened in these other cases?" Gwen asked.

I thought that that might be a good time for me to contribute. "As far as I could tell, pretty much exactly what's going on now. Young children were found dead by their light switches, with no sign of any struggle, break-in, illness, injury… nothing. There were three deaths in Waterbury, Connecticut, U.S.A. and four deaths in Wellington, New Zealand. And then, unfortunately, there's nothing. The articles just stop. There's no mention of the attacks stopping – although they obviously did, since there's no more reports of the attacks happening, either. It just fades out of the news entirely. Both times."

"So there's no precedent for ending it?" Tosh asked.

"It doesn't seem it," Ianto answered. "From all the information gathered… it really seems that these attacks just stopped on their own. Nobody did anything to combat it, it just stopped happening."

"So our options are, sit back and wait for it to end again, or go it alone and figure out how to stop it ourselves," Owen mused. "And something tells me that first option, isn't really an option, is it?"

"Nope," Jack stated matter-of-factly. "So, Ianto, what do we know about these Electrites? The more we know about them, the closer we get to figuring out how to stop them before they have the chance to kill again."

Ianto shuffled through the papers. "Well, like I mentioned, they live in and feed off of electricity. According to the files, when they're here on Earth they live in the electrical wiring in buildings. It's a constant source of food."

"But that doesn't explain the deaths." Gwen pointed out. "If all they want is the electricity from the wires, why kill anyone? Why kill _children_?"

"Well, don't we have… electrical impulses in our brain, or something?" I asked.

"Simply put, yeah," Owen agreed. "And if the Electrites were feeding on that electricity, that would explain why the brain was the first thing to go in all three bodies that I examined."

"But why would they need to do that?" Gwen asked, looking bothered. "If they have a constant source of electricity from the wiring, why bother killing innocent children?"

"It says here that the Electrites prefer 'electricity with a purpose'," Ianto said, reading from the case file. "Though I'm not entirely sure what that means, since I would imagine the electricity in wiring has a 'purpose'. It'll be used to heat a house, or power a light bulb…"

Jack shook his head. "That electricity has a purpose, sure. But think about it. Which 'purpose' do you think is stronger? Powering a light bulb, or powering a brain? I'd bet the electricity that goes into living is a hell of a lot more impressive than the electricity that goes into a house. It's like… a hamburger compared to filet mignon."

"Ok, could you not compare our brains to steaks, thank you?" Gwen complained. Jack merely shrugged.

But what Jack said (creepy mental image though it was) made me wonder. "What about animals, though?" I asked. "These Electrites could feed on them –I mean, we do. Why did they choose humans?"

"We've got all the more highly-evolved life processes, haven't we?" Jack explained, slightly sarcastically. "Not just breathing and eating and reacting by instinct, but thinking all those wonderful deep thoughts and feeling all those wonderful deep emotions."

"Lucky us," Owen sighed. "And to think, all those ancient Greek philosophers actually thought our ability to ponder our existence made us special."

"Apparently, it does," Tosh responded. "Just … maybe not in quite as good a way as is commonly believed."

"But if they want deep thoughts and feelings, why children?" Gwen asked, clearly still bothered. "Wouldn't an adult have deeper thoughts and feelings? Why don't these things go for… I don't know, philosophy professors? Or psychiatrists?"

"Or _poets_?" Owen added. He was met with a fair number of blank stares. "What? They're deep…"

"Unfortunately, there's absolutely nothing in here that says anything about how they choose their prey; only what their preferred prey is," Ianto answered.

"So, we know what they're prone to attack, and we know what happens to their victims," Gwen said. "Other than that, though, we're on our own."

Jack nodded. "Pretty much."

"Actually, there is one other thing working in our favor," Ianto pointed out. "From what we can tell from each of the three cases, these Electrites always strike in the same general area of town. They haven't yet left a three-mile radius of the first attack. Of course, we don't know why, so it's possible that that's always been a fluke."

"But, if we assume that this isn't a fluke," Jack started, "we can check to see if there's a more specific pattern to these attacks. Hopefully, there'll be one, and then we'll know exactly where and when the Electrites will strike next. And Torchwood will be waiting for them there."

I didn't really want to burst any bubbles, but I was too curious not to ask. "Er… What happens if there isn't a discernable pattern to lead us to the exact location of the next attack?"

I was surprised by how matter-of-fact Jack was when he answered. "We evacuate the entire 3-mile radius and keep tabs on every light-switch in the area, from tonight until they strike."

"Seriously? We can do that?" I asked.

"Yup," Jack responded, just as straightforward. "Now, let's see what we can do to head these Electrites off," he said, sweeping out of the meeting room and into the main area of the Hub. We all followed.

"Toshiko, run some scans and see if there's any pattern to the dates of the attacks," Jack commanded. "Owen, check through the medical records of each of the victims. Maybe they all had something special going on with their brains. Gwen, see what you can get out of the victims' personal information; a trend in surnames, birthdays, hair color, anything."

The three of them set about their scanning, while Jack, Ianto and I watched with anticipation. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to go back to the vaults and keep scanning for Void stuff, but I figured that as long as no one was telling me to do so, I'd stay where I was and be part of the action.

Owen was the first to come up with any results – or rather, the first to finish with nothing conclusive. "All the victims, even the ones from the old cases, were perfectly average people. No unusual levels of anything, anywhere. Their brains were just fine."

"Alright, fine. That's one option down," Jack sighed. "Gwen, Tosh? Anything from you ladies yet?"

"Still looking, but I haven't come up with any connections between personal details yet," Gwen answered.

"Same goes for me," Tosh added, "though I'm still scanning, too."

"Wonderful," Jack said, sighing again. "Ianto, why don't you start preparing our message to the police, detailing why we have to clear an entire section of Cardiff. And while you're at it, if you could start preparing a story for the people we'll have to move, too – "

But Jack was interrupted by Tosh's exclamation. "Aha! I think I might have found something!" We all crowded around her desk as she explained. "Each of the victims died the night of their birthday. I'm not entirely sure _why_ the Electrites would care about birthdays, but that's the only connection I could find."

With a pensive look on his face, Owen said, "Well, kids tend to get excited over their birthdays, right? That excitement is stimulating, obviously… Don't know if it would increase brain activity enough to make a difference to the Electrites, but it might just do something to make the energy…" He looked pointedly at Jack. "Tastier, to go with your steak analogy from earlier."

Jack nodded. "That's a good point – and a big help. That greatly narrows our pool of possible victims. Gwen – "

"Check the personal files of everyone in the area to see who has a birthday sometime this week? Got it," Gwen smiled, tapping the computer screen. "But should I bother searching for anyone over the age of, oh, seven?"

"None of the victims have ever been older than that, but I'd go with ten, just to be safe," Jack answered.

"Right."

Gwen's scan conveniently revealed that there was only one child left in that area of Cardiff with a birthday this week: a five-year-old boy (turning six in three days) named Jimmy Davies. He lived just three streets away from the Morgans.

"So we figure little Jimmy's next, then?" Owen asked.

"Seems like a safe bet," Jack answered. "Ianto, you know those statements I asked you to start making up? If you could just change them – "

"To work for just one family's flat, instead of the whole neighborhood? I'll get right on that," Ianto answered.

"You people are just a step ahead of me today, aren't you? I like it," Jack said with a smile.

"Well, we got good while you were gone," Ianto pointed out – perfectly cordially on the surface, but with a barely detectable hint of bitterness.

It looked like Jack got that hint, though, because he cleared his throat in a slightly uncomfortable manner before continuing. "Right, ah, so, plan. We get the Davies family out of their flat on Thursday night; September sixth, going into seventh. We set up sensors at each light switch in the flat, so that if there're any strange electricity levels, we'll know. Tosh will stay here at the Hub to monitor the data from the sensors. When Tosh sees that the sensors have detected something abnormal, she lets us know; then, I make contact with the offending light switch."

I was pretty sure I knew what that meant, but the reactions of the rest of the team solidified it. Owen looked at the ground, and Ianto and Tosh winced. Gwen was the only one to actually say something, though she didn't manage to get much past, "Jack, really," before Jack cut her off.

"Is there someone else you'd like to volunteer to die?" he asked forcefully. Then his face softened a bit. "It'll be fine. I'm used to it by now, believe me."

It was my turn to wince, then; remembering what I'd seen on television of what the Master had done to Jack – and what had been only implied. I'm not sure if Jack noticed me wince, or if he just randomly picked that moment to turn my direction. Either way, I had a pretty hard time meeting his eyes when he looked at me. Meaning that after a quick glance, it was my turn to look at the ground. But even in that short time, I could tell that he knew that I understood his allusion.

"Anyway," Jack continued as if he hadn't just been discussing his own death, "the bodies Owen examined, as he mentioned, had no strange levels of anything, electricity included. That leads me to believe that after the Electrites take all the electricity from the victim's body, they leave it. When this happens, someone else on the team will trap them in some sort of insulated container."

I got another chance to be helpful then. "I just saw an insulated box in the vaults earlier today," I said. "I forget what the material was called, but it was from… somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy, I think it said. The file said it's a really efficient insulator, stronger than anything known here on Earth."

"Perfect," Jack smiled at me. "So we'll use that to capture the Electrites. Death prevented, job done.

"Now," he continued, "like I said, Tosh will need to stay here to monitor the sensors. I'd like to have a team member in every room of the flat, if possible… Ianto, can you find out how many rooms are in this family's flat?"

"Sure," Ianto responded, tapping away at the keyboard to the computer at the nearby desk. Mere seconds later, he had an answer. "Two bedrooms, one living room, one kitchen-slash-dining room, and one bathroom. So five total rooms to monitor… assuming we're bothering with the bathroom?"

Jack nodded. "Might as well, since we've got enough people to cover all five rooms."

Gwen looked puzzled. "I thought you said Tosh was staying here to monitor the sensors?"

"I did."

Still confused, Gwen silently counted the people in the room. I was doing the same thing, so it made sense that the two us figured it out at the same time.

"Oh," we said in tandem. Still together, we both asked, "Seriously!?" although I sounded a bit perkier than she did.

"Yes," was Jack's simple answer.

"Jack, she's not even been here two weeks!" Gwen exclaimed. "At the very least, she needs training, doesn't she? And I thought we agreed that she was too young to be going out on jobs with us?"

"We did. But we could really use a fifth person, and we're lucky enough to have one. As for training, I think she'd need more training to be the one staying here and monitoring the sensors than she'd need to sit in a room and watch for anything strange. This isn't a recon mission; we pretty much know what we're dealing with, here. … Essentially. The point is, as far as jobs go, this is one of the safer types. She'll be fine."

"Jack – "

"This isn't open for debate, Gwen," Jack said with an air of finality. "Look, I don't entirely like this idea, either. But we need five people in the flat, and one here at the Hub. The only way this will happen is if we include Cate. Besides, every Torchwood employee – even the support staff – needs to be initiated into field work at some point, so we know to what extent we can count on them if they're needed in an emergency. This will be her time. End of story."

"Well, now that that's settled, maybe we should stop talking about her like she isn't standing right here?" Ianto suggested. I smiled to let him know I appreciated that sentiment.

Jack actually looked a bit ashamed. "Right." He turned to me. "Sorry. I suppose I should have let you say something, since it involves you… Do you have anything to say?"

To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure what there was to say in a case like this. It sure didn't seem to me as if I really had a choice as to whether I wanted to get involved; even if I did have a choice, I would have agreed to go anyway, so it wouldn't have made a difference. All the same, I figured I should make some sort of comment. "I appreciate your concern, really… But I think I can do it. I mean, I can do it. I have to do it, so… I will."

"You can always say no," Gwen interjected.

"To Torchwood?" I asked her. I shook my head. "No you can't. I don't know, maybe _I _can; you kind of have to keep me around, so I guess I don't have to worry about being RetConned or fired… But I don't want to take advantage of that. You may have only hired me because there was nothing else you could do with me, but now that I'm an official Torchwood employee, I don't want to be treated any differently than anyone else who works here. Whatever is required of Torchwood employees at large, I'll do. This is my job, same as yours, and… and I plan to do it to the best of my ability, same as any of you. Besides," I added as an afterthought, "I'm not _that_ much younger than Ianto, and he's been working here for a couple of years. So I can't be that much younger than he was when he started."

Ianto nodded. "She has a point there. Only a couple of years, probably."

"She has a point in general," Jack said. He turned to me and added, "I have a funny feeling we're going to be glad we hired you – even if it was originally 'because there was nothing else we could do with you'. As long as you can live up to your words, that is."

"I won't let you down," I promised. And I meant it.

"Good," he nodded. He paused for a moment, sighed, then said, "It's been a long day." He glanced at his watch. "And it's getting late. I say, finish up whatever you were working on, then go home. There's nothing else we can do with this case until Thursday, anyway."

Gwen was just about done with whatever it was she had been doing, so in just a few minutes we were on our way back to her apartment. Usually she was quite chatty on the way home, but tonight she wasn't saying anything at all. I assumed it was because I would be going out on this job in a couple of days. It wasn't an entirely unexpected reaction, although I really hoped she wasn't upset with _me_ – it's not like I caused this, and I would have thought she'd understand that. After a couple of minutes of complete silence, though, I started to worry that maybe she _was _angry at me after all.

I didn't have to worry for too long, though. About halfway through the trip, she finally spoke. "So. You're coming along with us on Thursday," she said, without turning to look at me.

"Sure seems it… Unless Jack changes his mind," I answered uncomfortably.

Gwen shook her head. "He won't. He rarely does." She sighed, then stopped walking to turn and face me for the first time. "I knew we'd end up bringing you out with us eventually, I just didn't think it would be this soon."

"Believe me, neither did I."

"I know. I'm sorry. I know you didn't choose this. It's just that..." Another sigh. "I don't know what you saw when you watched us on television. I just don't want you going into this thinking that since you've seen all this before, you know what to expect. Because the truth is, we don't even ever know what to expect, not really. And this is our job; we live our lives like this every day, and we have no idea what's going to come at us on any given case. I mean, we build our case files and gather all possible information, but when you're there, in that moment, facing this creature from God-knows-where that might want to kill you, or maybe it just wants to play… You can't prepare for that. No amount of information can possibly prepare you for that – and just watching a TV program won't even come close."

"I know. I promise, I'm not going to just waltz into this under the impression that it's going to be easy," I started. "I know that I have no idea what it's really like, honestly. But I meant what I said back in the Hub: I work for Torchwood now, no matter how that came to happen. I want to do what I have to do as a Torchwood employee, whatever that means. I know that I'm young and that maybe going out on jobs isn't the best place for me right now, so I'm content to be the support staff until I'm older. But if I'm needed… I'm willing to do what I'm needed to do. That, I would think, is my job."

Gwen looked at me for a moment. Then she nodded and said, "You might be a bit young for this, but from what I've seen in the past week and a half, at least you seem to be mature and level-headed. Jack must think so, too, or he wouldn't have decided to bring you along, no matter how convenient it might be. And I suppose that's what really matters, isn't it? Not the number of your age, but the maturity that comes with it."

I smiled. "Hey, maybe if you factor in that maturity level, I actually _am_ the same age as Ianto was when he first started working for Torchwood!"

Gwen laughed. "Maybe! Then everyone's happy: I get my number, Jack gets his help…"

"And I get a semi-logical argument in my favor! Everyone wins!"

Our usual level of cheerful talkativeness restored, we continued our walk to Gwen's flat. As we reached the entrance, I said, "By the way, Gwen… Thanks. For thinking I'm mature. People back home used to say that, too, and it's always been something I was proud of… So, yeah. Thanks."

She smiled at me, then gave me a quick hug. "Just promise me that you'll be careful. Careful and alert."

"I promise."

"Good. And be aware that I reserve the right to remind you of that at any time between now and when the job is done."

"I kind of figured you would," I said, laughing.

"Now," she said as we entered the building, "I called Rhys earlier to let him know that we'd probably be late, and he said he'd make dinner tonight. So let's go see what wonders he's cooked up for us, shall we?"

And that was my day. I can't believe that I started today thinking it was exciting just to get to help Ianto go through old articles – little did I know I'd end the day knowing that I'll actually be going out on a job in a couple of nights! I'm a bit nervous, to be honest… but I think Gwen was right. If Jack didn't think I could handle it, he wouldn't have decided to take me along. And I trust that Jack knows what he's doing. It's just amazing how much your life can change in just a few hours.

Though I suppose that I, of all people, should have already been aware of that. 


	7. Flicker

_A/N: Another big thank you to everyone who's reading and reviewing! I'm really glad you're enjoying it! This is the last chapter in this particular story line, so the next bit that goes up will be the start of a new mission…_

And of course, I don't own Torchwood or anything related to it. The people who do own it deserve all the praise they get, so I would never want to steal it from them, anyway.

September 8, 2007

All in all, the Electrite job was a success, I think. They won't be causing any more trouble here – unless there's more of them out there, somewhere. And on a personal note, I didn't screw anything up, or die. I definitely count _that_ as a success, not dying.

Two days ago, Jack let us all out of work early, so we could get some sleep before heading over to the Davies' house at midnight. I wish I knew exactly what Jack told this poor family about why we had to kick them out of their flat for a night, but whatever he said, they listened, as the place was empty when we got there. We gathered in the living room to run through the plan one more time before everything got underway.

"So," Jack started, "there'll be one of us in each room. We'll each be watching to see if anything unusual goes on, and Tosh will be monitoring the flat from the Hub for any strange readings. When something does happen, let me know; I'll come in and get the Electrites out of the wiring. When they're done with me and are going back towards the switch, whoever else is in the room will take this," he held up the insulated box, "and capture them inside. Any questions?"

When no one said anything, Jack nodded. "Good. Alright, then…" He glanced around the apartment. "I'll take little Jimmy's room, since that seems to be the most likely place for an attack. Ianto, you take the parents' room; Gwen, take the kitchen; Owen, stay here in the den; and Cate, you take the bathroom." We all started to go our separate ways, but Jack had one more instruction. "Oh, and guys, I asked the family to leave the house exactly as it would be on any normal night – any lights that are usually off are off, and any that are usually on are on. So don't change anything; I don't want to Electrites to notice that anything is different about tonight." With that, we split up.

I followed Jack and Ianto down the hall, but turned into the bathroom a few feet before they reached their destinations. And then I was on my own.

It was a nice little bathroom, all things considered. It was neat and clean, anyway – which was wonderful, because being stuck in a dirty bathroom would have made me even more uncomfortable than I already was. Sitting in a dark bathroom in the middle of the night waiting for killer aliens to attack was pretty much a free-for-all for my overactive imagination. I mean, I stayed calm – I knew that losing my cool would be a bad and dangerous idea – but I couldn't quite shake that annoying feeling that someone (or something) was watching me. I fleetingly wished I could turn on the light, but I knew that wasn't allowed. At least there was a little night-light that had been left on. It didn't do much, but it did stop the room from being pitch-black.

And so I waited. And waited. And… waited. And there was nothing. Nothing strange going on in my room; no sounds coming from any of the other rooms; no communication from Tosh or the others in the apartment. Honestly, I think it's safe to say that for an hour or so, I was actually _bored_ on a Torchwood mission. I didn't think that was possible.

I was halfway through counting the roses on the wall paper when the little night-light – my sole source of light – started to flicker. "Fantastic," I thought to myself. Not only would I lose my game of rose-counting if that light went out, but (more importantly) I'd also be unable to see anything at all. Not to mention the fact that Jack said he wanted all the lights to remain as they were, and this light was supposed to be _on_. I thought about contacting one of the others, but I didn't want to make it seem like I couldn't handle something as simple as a dead light bulb. I decided to give the night-light my own once-over before calling for back-up. I saw that it was one of the kind that doesn't have a switch, but a sensor that can tell how dark the room is. I remembered having a night-light like that in my bathroom back home; whenever ours wasn't working, we'd just jiggle it a bit and usually it would light up. Maybe, I hoped, this one would be the same deal.

Looking back, touching any light in that house in any way probably would have been an extremely bad idea, but at the time I'd been thinking that as long as it didn't have a switch, I'd be safe. I didn't find out just how wrong that reasoning was until a bit later, but luckily, just as I was about to try jiggling the night-light, Jack's voice came through the Bluetooth device Torchwood had provided me with (inadvertently saving my life).

"Cate, is there anything going on in the bathroom? Tosh said she's seeing a massive spike in the amount of electricity going through those wires."

"Er, yeah, actually," I answered. "The night-light in here just started flickering… but sounds a bit off for a power surge, doesn't it? Shouldn't the night-light be glowing brighter?"

"It is a bit counter-intuitive, yeah," Jack responded. "Hold on, I'm coming to check it out."

A few seconds later, Jack appeared at the bathroom door. His eyes were immediately drawn to the flickering night-light. "Yup, definitely think it shouldn't be doing that," he said. "Let's take a look…"

As he walked over to the wall where the night-light was plugged in, I told him what I'd already discovered. "The night-light doesn't have a switch; it's one of those light-sensing ones," I said. "And based on when you called me, I figure it must have started flickering just a second or two before Tosh called you."

"Interesting," he said, peering at the light. "If you're right about the timing, this flickering definitely seems to be connected to the extra electricity." He sighed and turned to look at me. "The thing is, why would the Electrites come to the bathroom? How would they know that their intended prey isn't in his bedroom? And why go for you instead? They could have just attacked me in the room they'd planned on, instead of switching both prey _and _location."

"Well, if age is a major factor, I _am_ the youngest..." I tried.

Jack nodded. "Or, at the very least, I'm definitely the oldest," he added with a wink.

"True, but I wasn't going to be the one to point that out," I said with a chuckle.

Jack smiled at me, then went back to business. "So maybe they went for you because you're the youngest, or because I'm too old. That still doesn't explain – "

I cut him off there, because I'd had an idea. "Jack, what about the whole excitement thing? You know, what Owen pointed out about little kids being happy about their birthdays? Maybe my age – and yours – didn't matter at all; maybe it was the fact that I probably had the most stuff running through my brain. I mean, this being my first official Torchwood job and all, I was admittedly a bit… on edge. And excited, too. If we go by Owen's theory, putting those two emotions together would be like a gourmet meal for the Electrites, wouldn't it?"

"That's a good point," Jack said thoughtfully. "That's a _very _good point, actually." He paused. "But then, what's to say that age is a factor at all? Why was it always little kids? Why not go for adults whose birthdays were coming up?"

"Well, adults are usually not quite as excited as little kids are for their birthdays," I said. "But I would think there'd be some teenagers being attacked; someone turning 16 or 18 or even 21 is usually pretty darn happy for their birthday, maybe even more so than a little kid because a teenager really understands what… it… means…" I realized that Jack was ignoring me and staring at the night-light. I cleared my throat softly. "Er, Jack?"

"What happened when the light started flickering?" he asked suddenly, without taking his eyes off the night-light.

"Uh… I looked at it? Puzzledly?" I answered, quite confused.

"So you examined it, then? Looked at it closely?"

"I suppose you could say that," I said.

"Why?"

"Why did I examine it?" I asked. "Because… I was curious, I guess. I wanted to know why it was flickering."

"Right. Because you were curious," he said, turning away from the night-light for the first time in that interrogation to face me. "I think that we were partially right earlier," he continued. "Age _doesn't _matter – at least, not the way we thought it does." He looked back at the flickering light. "Think about it. Who's more likely to have a light on in their room at night? An adult, or…"

"A child," I said, nodding. "So, what, the Electrites play on the natural curiosity of humans to lure in their prey? And it just so happens to be kids so often simply because they're more likely targets?"

"That's what I'm starting to think. But, adult or child, that flickering is bound to get annoying," Jack continued. "If your night-light starts to flicker in the middle of the night, you aren't going to be happy about that. You're going to get up to try to make it stay either on or off."

"Which requires touching the light," I supplied. "Okay, that all makes sense, but what about the power surge? Where does that come in?"

"I'm still trying to figure that out," Jack responded, turning back to the night-light. "I would think that the extra power is the Electrites themselves – they feed on electricity, so maybe that's how our equipment registers them." He sighed. "But why the _flashing_? That just doesn't seem to fit."

"What if…" I started, then paused to gather my thoughts. "What if the Electrites hold back the power somehow to turn the light off, then let the power through again to turn it back on? Electricity would keep flowing through those wires, but it would just build up if it was being blocked – might that register as extra power?"

"That definitely makes sense," Jack said. "It would also explain why the light bulbs were burned out by a power overload; all the electricity that was building up would rush back in once the Electrites moved." He looked at me and nodded. "I'm impressed." I smiled. "Now," he continued, "I think we've made the Electrites wait long enough. I doubt that they can understand us, but they can probably sense our brains working overtime to figure all this out. They should be good and frustrated now – just like we get hungrier as we smell food cooking."

"So this was part of your plan all along, then?" I asked. "Figure all this out first, while in the same room as the Electrites, just to make them... hungrier?"

Jack flashed me one of his famous (infamous?) charming smiles. "Of course! Everything's always part of the plan. Except for when it's not," he said with a wink. "Now," he added, digging around in a pocket of his old military-style coat, "I need you to take this." He produced the insulated box.

I'd almost forgotten that part. "Whoever else was in the room," he'd said earlier. I'd never thought, when he'd said it, that it would mean me. But now it meant that _I_ was going to be the one to capture the Electrites – after they'd taken the electricity in his brain and left him for dead. There was a part of me that was happy and flattered that he trusted me – the new girl – with a job like this, and I was determined not to let him down. Most of me, though, was stuck on the part where Jack would be dying in front of me. I knew how it was going to happen – I'd seen it plenty of times on TV, after all – and I knew that he'd be fine. Still, the idea of watching him die in person creeped me out more than a little.

I tried not to let him see that I was uncomfortable, though, as I extended a hand to take the box. As business-like as possible, I asked, "So, how exactly will this work?"

If he noticed my discomfort, he didn't let on. "Granted things go according to plan, when they're done feeding on the electricity in my brain, they'll leave my body and head back towards the light switch. They won't make it there, though, because you'll be waiting for them with this box. Just hold it open over me and let them fly right in."

"And if things _don't_ go according to plan?" I had to ask.

"Well, then, things will get interesting," he responded. At least he was honest. "But you seem like a clever girl; I wouldn't have taken you with us if I didn't think you could improvise."

I nodded. "Right. Okay. Got it."

"Good," Jack said. "Ready?"

"Ready," I answered. Just before his hand reached the light switch, I quickly added, "Oh, and Jack? Thanks. For trusting me. With this, I mean." I gave the box a little shake. He smiled at me, then turned back to the wall. He took a deep breath, stretched his arm out, and let his hand touch the night-light.

And nothing happened.

Jack pulled his hand away and looked at it for a couple seconds, then bent over to examine the night-light more closely. "Huh," he said. He straightened up and looked at me. "Well, that wasn't supposed to happen." He examined the night-light again, even more closely. "It seems that my touching the night-light had no effect at all. Which really doesn't make – "

His sentence was, at that moment, interrupted by a scream – either of shock or pain, or more likely a mixture of both. As he was speaking, he'd decided to give the night-light a couple of quick taps, and that's when the Electrites decided to come rushing out of their wiring for their dinner. I think they were trying to catch us off-guard; if they were, they certainly succeeded. It all happened so fast – one second, Jack was talking to me, the next he was lying on the ground, twitching a bit in some not-quite-dead-but-barely-alive state. Automatic responses, some distant part of my brain was reasoning in an attempt to stay calm; he couldn't use his brain anymore, probably, so neural messages were being fired at random, with nowhere to go. It felt like some horribly twisted version of my high school AP Biology class. I honestly don't know how long it lasted. Thinking logically, it was probably only a minute or two, but it felt like hours, just standing there watching.

Then all of a sudden, Jack was still. Dead, I assumed; fully now. That same distant part of my brain told me to move, to walk towards Jack and get the insulated box ready to catch the escaping Electrites, but I was frozen. I can't even describe how I felt, really, because I'm not sure that I was feeling at all – I think I just kind of turned off for a little while, so that I wouldn't have to process what I had just seen. Luckily, it wasn't long before Jack's mouth started to glow – it looked as if he had tried to eat a flashlight (though really, the opposite was more accurate). This change in my surroundings snapped me out of my previous state, and I remembered that I had a very important job to do. I quickly knelt by Jack's side and opened the box over his mouth (I figured the glowing had something to do with the Electrites), and waited for the Electrites to try to leave.

I soon discovered that I was right about the source of the glowing. The Electrites looked like little particles of light; like Christmas lights seen from really far away, or teeny-tiny fireflies. If they didn't have a habit of killing people, I would have said that they were beautiful, but I can't quite bring myself to go that far. I also discovered that I was correct in the positioning of the box, as the Electrites floated slowly out of Jack's mouth and into the box. How none of them realized that they were flying straight into a trap, I don't know (my only guess is that they must be blind), but I don't really care, either. I'm just happy it worked.

When the last of the Electrites had arrived in the box, I shut the lid as quickly as possible. My job – my first official Torchwood field job – was finished, and as far as I knew, I'd done well. I let out a breath that I hadn't realized I was holding. I got the small roll of electrical tape that Jack had given each of us at the beginning of the night out of my back pocket, to give the box an extra seal. Once I'd used up all the tape (maybe that was excessive, but I'd rather be safe than sorry), I stood up and reached for my Bluetooth to contact the rest of the team and let them know the job was done.

I'd just about hit the call button when there was a loud gasp from behind me. I jumped and quickly spun around, even though I was nearly positive I recognized the sound. Sure enough, there was Jack, sitting up and looking right as rain. If I hadn't seen it happen, I never would have believed he'd been dead just a few seconds before.

"Phew," he sighed, shaking his head. "Alright. I'm awake." He looked at me. "Hello again! What did I miss?"

"Oh, not too much," I joked. "You know, just captured a group of killer aliens. All in a day's – or night's – work for Torchwood, right?" He laughed as I walked over to give him a hand up. "Welcome back, Jack. How are you feeling?"

"Me? Oh, I'm fine. I'm used to it by now," he answered. "I should be asking you! How did it go? I'm guessing it worked, judging by the slightly fluorescent box over there, and the fact that you said that you '_captured_' a group of killer aliens…"

I told him everything that happened while he was dead (now there's something you don't say every day). Though considering that he was only gone for a few minutes, I didn't really have much to tell him. When I was done, Jack nodded. "Very good, Cate. Well done. I knew it wasn't a mistake to bring you along," he added with a smile. All I could do was thank him and smile back. With that, he led the way out of the bathroom, saying, "I suppose we should let the rest of the team know that it's time to leave."

We headed back to the Hub for a quick debriefing before we all went to our respective homes. Jack decided that the best course of action to take would be to keep the Electrites in their insulated prison and lock them away in the vaults. He said he'd poke a wire through to keep them fed – we don't want to kill them, since it's not like they were murdering humans for fun; they just needed to eat. All the same, we can't risk simply letting them go, as most likely they'd come back some day and kill again. He also said that he'll take care of RetConning the Davies family, so that they won't remember leaving their house for a night. As for the other families, we can't really RetCon them – their stories were in the news, so everyone knows that the children died suddenly for no apparent reason; we'd have to RetCon the whole city of Cardiff! Instead, we'll tell the newspapers and television stations to run a story putting their deaths down to a rare illness that wasn't noticed until medical examiners studied the bodies a second time – after we have Owen "inform" the families of the same thing, of course.

And that was it. Once that meeting was over, we all went home – with permission to come in to work after lunch that day (considering that by the time we left the Hub, it was 4:00am). It was quite an experience, being out on the field with the Torchwood crew. I'm glad that I went, although it _did_ help me appreciate the relative safety and calm of working in the vaults! I definitely won't be looking for a promotion anytime extremely soon. I think, at least for now, I'm just fine with my current position – general support staff and occasional back-up operative; the safety of the Hub, plus the added bonus of being able to help with the big stuff when needed. I've got the best of both worlds.


	8. Time Travel

_A/N: Ok, a bit of managerial stuff. I've found a "Doctor Who"/"Torchwood"/"Sarah Jane Adventures" timeline on Wikipedia! Which is quite cool, except for the part where it sort of messed up my dates in here. So, me being the extremely picky person that I am with stuff like that (for my own writing, anyway; I honestly probably wouldn't notice it in someone else's), I've tried to reconcile it as much as possible. Thankfully, I'd already mentioned in the first chapter that I was rearranging the events at the very beginning of Torchwood, Series 2 (putting a bit of time between when Jack comes back and the arrival of Capt. John), so the months are close enough to fitting. But, I hadn't accounted for the fact that everything actually takes place a year ahead of when it airs (thank you, Doctor 9, for messing up when you brought Rose home that first time). So this chapter fixes that problem. It's a short one, and there's no aliens or action… But if I didn't do something about the dates, it would have driven me batty, so hopefully you won't mind a bit of a fluff/filler chapter!_

As always, I don't own "Torchwood", "Doctor Who", etc… And, more importantly, thanks for reading!  


September 10, 2008

Yeah, 2008. Really. Remember a few entries back, where I said I lost 23 days when I switched dimensions? Well, I was wrong. I lost a _year_ and 23 days. A year!! Needless to say, I'm a bit weirded-out at the moment.

Earlier today, Jack, Gwen, and Owen had gone out on a Weevil-capturing mission, leaving me at the Hub with Ianto and Tosh. Tosh had the radio on at one point, and the DJ announced that the song he was about to play was "Headlines," by the Spice Girls. Now, I own all three Spice Girls albums, and I knew for a fact that that song was on none of them. I figured, then, that they must be releasing a new single as part of the comeback they'd announced a couple of months ago. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was pretty excited for new Spice Girls material! (Ok, well, maybe I'm a _little_ ashamed… but not that much.)

Unfortunately, Tosh had the radio on pretty quietly. I couldn't hear it as well as I would have liked, from where I was doing a bit of dusting, and I'd already dusted Tosh's area of the Hub, so it's not like I could have moved closer on the grounds of doing work. So I asked if she wouldn't mind turning the volume up, just for that song.

"Ah, so you're a Spice Girls fan, I see," she said, smiling. "True, you're about the right age to have been completely caught up in that phenomenon, aren't you?" She chuckled when I nodded a bit sheepishly. "Sure, I'll turn it up for you. I actually quite like this song, too, to be honest."

"Oh, you've heard it before?" I asked.

That's where things started to get odd. Tosh gave me a kind of puzzled look, and Ianto even stopped his typing to listen in. "Well, yes," Tosh answered. "It was last year's Children in Need single; it was pretty hard to miss."

I gave her an equally puzzled look. "Last year? But… they didn't even reform until this summer. How could they have had a single out last Christmastime?"

It was Ianto's turn to give me a puzzled look (not that that stopped Tosh from continuing to do the same). "This summer, you say?"

"Yeah," I said. "Like… you know, _this_ summer. The one we just had – actually, no, we're still having, for another 12 days or so."

"Right, yeah, this summer… What year might you be referring to?" Ianto asked tentatively.

"Summer of 2007?" It was a statement, of course, but it came out more like a question. Really, I wasn't all that sure myself what I meant anymore, what with the two of them looking at me like I'd grown a second head.

"And that, you're saying, was this summer," Tosh said. "As in, right now, this year, is 2007."

"Well… That's what I _was_ saying…" I sighed. "I'm… I'm wrong, aren't I?"

"Erm…" Ianto paused before continuing. "Uh, I'm sorry but, yes. You're wrong."

I nodded slowly. "I was beginning to be afraid of that. How wrong am I?"

"Not too wrong," Tosh said in her best reassuring voice. "It's only 2008 right now."

"Oh. Right. 2008. Shiny." I was trying very, very hard to stay collected. "So, er, it's not September 10, 2007, then. It's September 10, 2008."

"Yes," Ianto responded.

"And I arrived here on August 26, 2008."

"Yeah."

"But I left my dimension in 2007."

"That's how it seems, from what you're telling us," Tosh said. "If it makes you feel any better, we didn't know you were from a year ago until just now, either; just like you didn't know that you, er… skipped a year."

I nodded again. "Right. Well, at least I know I'm not alone…" I thought about the situation for a moment. "So, what does this mean for my age? I mean, I'm still 18, obviously, that hasn't changed, but… Do I have to say I was born in 1990 now, instead of 1989? And what about my birth date, come to think of it? Does that need to be adjusted 23 days?"

"You could, but that would be more trouble than it's worth, in my opinion," Ianto answered. "I mean, it's a year and 23 days. If you go on saying that you were born in 1989, no one is going to look at you and think that you _must _be only 18, not 19. You look mature for your age, anyway – you said yourself that people always think you're older than you are."

"I suppose you're right," I agreed. "A year and 23 days won't make a huge difference, will it? Besides," I added, smiling, "I like my birthday! It's June 6… I don't have to worry about forgetting to write the date first now that I'm in Europe, instead of the month – it's six-dash-six either way!" Tosh and Ianto laughed.

"Oh!" Tosh exclaimed suddenly. "The song! We've missed it now, sorry…"

"What a pity," Ianto said under his breath, but Tosh and I heard him anyway.

"Ah, so you're _not _a Spice Girls fan, I see," Tosh said with a laugh.

"Please, do tell me you're not really surprised," Ianto responded.

"Hey, there were Spice Boys, you know!" I joked.

"Yes, I do know, and I was not one of them," an exasperated Ianto replied.

Jack, Gwen, and Owen happened to return just then. "Not one of what?" Jack asked, walking into the Hub, with Gwen and Owen not far behind.

Ianto only got as far as the first syllable in, "Nothing," when Tosh answered for him. "A Spice Boy."

"What, like, someone who adds the onion powder to soups?" Owen asks.

Gwen, Tosh, and I rolled our eyes, but before any of us could correct him, Jack beat us to it. "A Spice Boy, Owen, is what some people called male fans of the Spice Girls, back in the '90s."

"Ok, why do you know that?" Ianto asked.

"Hey, those girls were pretty good, back in the day. Can't go wrong with a good, fun pop song. Great dance music!" Jack said, in all seriousness.

Ianto looked slightly horrified. Gwen, Tosh, and I shared a surprised look and stifled giggles at the mental image of Jack dancing to "Wannabe". But Owen, I think, summed up all of our feelings: "As bizarre as that statement just was, there's a pretty big part of me that isn't the least bit surprised."

"As well you shouldn't be," Jack said. "Honestly, people, this is the 21st century! Even in the 20th century, when the Spice Girls were really popular… You need to relax with your prejudices. If the music's catchy, why shouldn't someone like it, no matter who they are?"

"I like the way you think," I smiled. The rest of the team nodded in agreement.

"Oh, er, Jack, speaking of 'This is the 21st century'," Ianto interjected, "I think we should mention something about Cate…"

And so my situation got explained to the rest of the team. I guess it really isn't a huge deal, in the end… It happened to Rose, too, and she turned out alright. The opposite happened to Martha – going back and reliving a year that she'd already done – and she seemed okay, too. So, you know, it could be worse. I could have been 50 years in the future or something! Or in the past! That would have been much harder to ignore. And hey, now I can really say I've traveled in time – more than just 23 days!

This dimension is just full of surprises, isn't it? Whether it's finding out that I'm a year farther into the future than I thought, or that Jack used to enjoy dancing around to the Spice Girls…. I doubt if I'll ever quite know what to expect here. But you know, that's okay – at least it will keep me on my toes!

Now… Seriously, I really _do_ want to hear that new (… er, old) Spice Girls song! Off to scour the internet…

_A/N 2: Hehe, that actually went on for longer than I expected… I hadn't planned on anything after the discovery of the time difference! It all just sort of came out on its own. Sorry if it's entirely strange oO. I genuinely don't know where it came from. But, if you've gotten this far, thanks for putting up with it! (I also apologize to Captain Jack Harkness for having a bit of fun with him . Like I said, it just sort of came out…)_


	9. Fun and Games

_**WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES FINALE IN THE AUTHOR'S NOTE!!**__ The chapter itself is fine, actually, so you can read that if you want. Something in the series finale inspired me to write this chapter, but there is absolutely no mention of that something in the chapter. BUT THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THE AUTHOR'S NOTE!!_

_I think that's a fair enough warning…_

_A/N: This is pretty much another filler chapter, but there's good reason. I had planned on putting the next filler-type chapter in after I posted the next event-filled chapter (which I'm in the middle of writing), but then I saw the "Torchwood" series finale. And… it made me sad. It also made me really want to give Tosh and Owen one last hurrah in my story, since I don't know if there'll be any other place to give them a proper tribute. So, sorry you have to wait a bit longer now for something exciting, but I thought Tosh and Owen deserve a little memorial. They will be missed.  
_

_Thanks for reading, and enjoy!_

_Oh, and I apologize in advance if I misused the term "disco". If I did – or if I ever misuse any British terminology in the future – please correct me. Thanks!_

_(And, as always, it doesn't belong to me, I'm not getting paid, etc.)_

--

September 16, 2008

"No."

"Oh, really, Owen, it could be fun!"

"No, Tosh."

"You're being a spoil-sport!"

"And you're surprised?"

"I, well, you, but…"

That was what I heard, coming from Tosh's area of the Hub this morning while I was delivering everyone's coffee. It went on like that for a while, too; I gave Ianto, Jack, and Gwen their coffees, and even left Owen's on his desk, yet Tosh and Owen were _still _arguing over… whatever it was they were arguing over. I really didn't want to interrupt them – that could get awkward, walking in on two people having such a heated discussion, especially just to give them their coffee. So I dawdled as much as I could, at least until I noticed both Jack and Ianto squinting their eyes at me, clearly wondering what the heck I was doing. I mustered up my courage, and planned to sort of sneak in and sneak out before they could even really notice me.

Somewhere along the way, though, that plan failed, because all of a sudden, just as I was about to place Tosh's coffee on her desk, Owen called my name. "Cate!"

I looked up, Tosh's coffee hovering a few centimeters above her desk, still in my hand. I tried to appear nonchalant – you know, like I hadn't been attempting to avoid them. "Hmm?"

"You watched us all on the TV show, right?" he asked.

Confused, I responded, "Um, yeah, I did. Why?"

"So even though you haven't been here all that long yet, you probably know us pretty well, yeah?"

"I, er, well, maybe. Maybe not really well, but, better than I would have at this point if I'd never watched the show, I guess. Why?"

"Do I seem like the Scrabble-playing type of guy to you?" Owen asked, in all seriousness. I saw Tosh roll her eyes. I figured that that was what they'd been arguing about, though I couldn't think for the life of me why.

"Um… Huh?" I really didn't know quite how to respond to that. It's not like I'd ever thought about it before.

"Do I seem like the type of guy who'd like to play Scrabble?" Owen repeated.

"I… I really have no idea, Owen," I answered, shaking my head. "Is there a particular reason you're asking me this?"

"I simply asked him what he thought about the team getting together some night to play Scrabble," Tosh explained, sounding somewhat exasperated. "We spend so much time risking our lives together, I just thought it might be fun to do something… well, _fun_ together instead!"

I nodded. "That sounds like a perfectly logical suggest – "

"Except that Scrabble isn't fun!" Owen interjected. "It's… you have to be able to _spell_! Any game that requires me to think that much just to win does not fall under the heading of 'fun'. I have no problem with thinking when I'm doing work, but the whole point of doing something fun is not to be doing work!"

"Oh, Owen, it's not asking you to spell anything difficult!" Tosh said. "You can use a word as simple as, as, as 'chair' if you wanted, or 'paper'!"

"She is right, you know," I said. "You don't need to be a spelling bee champion to play Scrabble. Not even to win Scrabble."

"Yeah, but if we all went out to a pub or a disco instead, none of us would need to be able to spell at all, now would we?" Owen replied.

"Is that your suggestion for a team outing?" I asked. Owen nodded.

"But we _usually _go to pubs or restaurants!" Tosh exclaimed, still frustrated. "I wanted to suggest something different!"

"A _disco _is different; we've never done that before, not properly," Owen said, quite seriously. Tosh just rolled her eyes.

"You know, I have an idea," I said. "Why don't we put it to a vote. Both of you can give the rest of the team your suggestions, and let all six of us decide what to do, disco or Scrabble. Sound fair?"

Owen and Tosh nodded. "Yeah, well, we were getting to that part," Owen added. "We were just discussing it together first."

"Of course," I said.

Owen started walking away. "Right, well, I'll just go and see what the team thinks, then." He turned around and looked at Tosh. "And don't worry, Tosh, I'll be honorable and let them know your idea, too, even if I don't like it," he said with a small bow.

As he walked away to talk to the rest of the team, I called after him, "I vote Scrabble, by the way, Owen!" I gave him a sweet smile when he turned around; he gave me a sarcastic, "Of course you do." Then he continued on his way.

"Honestly, I swear he isn't happy unless he's being snarky," Tosh sighed.

"Yeah, you have a point… But I'm sure he'll come around," I smiled. "I know I didn't know him personally until I got here, but I really think he's _already _starting to come around. He's been a lot nicer to me than I expected from watching the first season of the show."

Tosh nodded. "I hope you're right," she said with a somewhat sad smile. Then she looked at me as if something had just dawned on her. "You wouldn't happen to be saying that you're sure he'll come round because you _know_ he will, would you? You didn't, you know… see it on the TV show? Maybe you know something I don't know?"

"Sorry, Tosh, but actually, you probably know more than I do, at least about recent events," I said. "The last thing I saw on the show was when Jack left. Anything that happened after that… I've got no idea."

Tosh nodded. "Right, of course." She gave a slightly embarrassed chuckle. "Besides, even if you did know something I didn't… you probably couldn't tell me, could you?"

I laughed, too. "Probably not. It would mess up the time-space continuum, or bring two universes crashing into each other, or something."

"Bad idea, then," Tosh said with a smile.

"Slightly, I'd say, yeah," I replied, smiling back. "This world's already been forced to repeat time twice. Both times it was for the best, of course, but still, I'd hate to cause it a third time just because I told you something you shouldn't know."

"I don't blame you," Tosh nodded. "That'd be an awful lot to have on your conscience!" Then she made a puzzled face. "Hang on," she said, looking at me, "did you say 'twice'?"

"Uhh…" Oops. So Jack hadn't told his team about the whole thing with the Master. I started racking my brain for a way to explain that comment, but luckily Owen chose that very moment to come back from his vote-taking.

Owen cleared his throat and stood very rigidly in front of Tosh and me, hands behind his back. "So. The votes are in," he said. "And…" He paused, looking from Tosh to me then back again. "Looks like we're playing Scrabble," he finished somewhat lamely. "You win, Tosh."

Tosh beamed. "Thank you, Owen, for admitting it so humbly."

"Oh, I'm not done yet," Owen said with a sly smile. "Because, you see, I have this!" He produced a dictionary from behind his back. "Ianto's lent it to me so I can prepare to be kick-arse at Scrabble. If I'm going to play your board game, Toshiko Sato, I'm going to play to win."

I fought the urge to burst out laughing, while Tosh said – with gritted teeth, I might add, "Alright, Owen. You do that. Have fun."

"Oh, I will," Owen said. "And by the time we play, I will be the best damn Scrabble speller in the world! That's, W-O-R-L-D, world, by the way," he added with a wink. "Now, if you ladies will excuse me, I have W-O-R-K work to do." He started to walk away, but turned back. "Oh, right, coffee. Cate, do you – "

"I already left it on your desk," I interrupted. "Though it might be cold by now, sorry."

"That's alright, I'll just warm it up. And by 'it', I mean 'coffee', which is spelled C-O-F-F-E-E. Oh, that's a good one, do you get extra points for double letters?" He smiled brightly. "You know what, Tosh? I think I might enjoy this game after all!" He chuckled to himself as he headed toward his desk.

Tosh watched him walk away with a look of complete disbelief on her face. "He. Is. Impossible."

"For someone who was so adamantly against having to think to play a game, he sure is putting a lot of effort into this," I said thoughtfully. "He's not going to let this drop, is he?"

"Nope. He'll probably be spelling everything until we actually get together to play," Tosh sighed. "Longer, if he loses, I'd bet."

"Aha," I nodded. "Can I suggest, then, that we make this Scrabble day sometime soon? And that maybe we let him win?"

Tosh laughed. "I think that sounds like a good idea."

"Well, I should probably get down to work, and let you do the same," I said. "Here's your coffee… which also probably needs warming up." She thanked me as I set the coffee down on her desk – finally!

I happened to walk by Ianto as I headed down to the vaults. I couldn't help but mention the trouble his dictionary was causing. "You realize he's spelling everything now?"

Ianto nodded. "Yes, well, I didn't give him that dictionary by choice. He just saw it on my desk and took it. Technically he did ask if he could borrow it, but he thanked me for it before I could respond, and walked away."

"Yeah, I can see that happening," I smiled. "Ah well, it's bound to make things interesting around here for a while."

"That's one way to put it," Ianto responded. Then we left each other to our assignments.

Just as Tosh and I suspected, Owen was spelling things for the rest of the day – which doesn't bode well for the days to come. Though, I guess it is kind of funny… but I can see it getting old extremely quickly. I guess we'll just have to wait and see!


	10. Fallibility

_A/N: Well, that took a lot longer to finish than expected. It was kind of sitting here, on my computer, ¾ of the way finished for a week-and-a-half-ish, since I got inundated with essays for school sigh. Dratted end-of-semester work, it all gets piled on at once! So, very very sorry about the delay._

_I do have good news: the next three chapters are planned out in so much detail that they're practically already written, so those should go pretty quickly! That does mean that the next three chapters are also the __last__ three chapters, but don't worry, it's not done for good. It's just switching over to "Doctor Who," which will make more sense later._

_As always, thanks so much to everyone who's been reading (and an extra thanks to those who've been reviewing!!). Enjoy!_

* * *

September 22, 2008

Today, the impenetrable Torchwood Hub, was penetrated.

It had been pretty quiet today, all things considered. Really, the only thing that happened that was of any sort of interest was when Gwen finally broke down and threw this little stuffed bear she keeps on her desk (it's a gift from Rhys) at Owen to make him stop spelling things. It didn't work, but it was pretty comical. (Owen didn't win Scrabble, by the way, but he's since challenged us all to a rematch, so he's still trying to memorize the dictionary. No one will ever be able to say that Owen isn't determined when he wants to be.) It wasn't until the late afternoon, when Ianto decided to open up the info center for a little while, that things got messy.

Down in the vaults, you really can't hear anything that's going on in the more populated areas of the Hub. So, when I decided to take a quick trip upstairs to get something to drink, I had no idea that anything out of the ordinary was happening up there. I didn't see any need to be cautious, then, as I walked toward the main room. Even if I _had _had some sense that I needed to be careful, I doubt it would have done me any good. I still would have been breathing, and that's where the real trouble was: I walked up the stairs and into a cloud of gas. The main room was filled with it; I couldn't see a thing. I don't know how long the Hub had been in that condition by the time I got there, but it mustn't have been that long, because that gas was plenty strong enough to knock me completely unconscious. I remember that I had just enough time to get far enough past my complete and utter confusion to wonder if I was about to die, before I blacked out.

When I eventually came around, I found myself sitting on the floor of the Hub, tied up back-to-back with someone I couldn't see. Based on the fact that Tosh, Owen, and Gwen were tied up together a few feet away from me, and that Jack was tied to a chair in front of us, I figured that I was tied to Ianto. Because of the way we were all positioned, I could only see Tosh's and Jack's faces; Jack still appeared to be unconscious, but Tosh was awake, looking at Jack. I tried to catch her eye – I didn't want to make any sound, just in case whoever had done all this was in the room somewhere behind me where I couldn't see them – but my slight movements caught Ianto's attention first.

"You're awake?" Ianto asked from behind me. Apparently there was no need to worry about noise.

"Yeah, I am," I replied. "Awake, and confused. What's going on?"

"Cate!" Ianto said with surprise. "I could ask you the same thing! What are you doing up here? You should have stayed in the vaults – I doubt he would have thought to look for anyone down there!"

"Well, I didn't exactly _plan_ on getting knocked out and tied up," I answered. "I had no idea anything was going on up here; you know how disconnected you are in the vaults! All I wanted to do was get something to drink. Then I walked into a room filled with gas, and next thing I know, I'm tied up here! And what do you mean, 'he' wouldn't have thought to look in the vaults? Who's he?"

It was Tosh who answered this time. "We don't know. At least, Ianto and I don't; I don't know about the others, they haven't woken up yet."

"All I know is that this man came into the info center acting like he wanted a postcard of Cardiff," Ianto added. "He reached into his pocket – to get his wallet, I assumed, to pay for the postcard – but pulled out this little can and sprayed whatever was in it at me. I was out before I could even quite process what had just happened."

"Then he must have worked out where the button is to open the door to the Hub – though goodness knows how he even knew about any of this – because he came in and threw a smoke bomb, filled with the same gas that was in the can," Tosh continued. "At least, we assume it was the same gas. The smoke bomb did seem to have had the same effect on us as the gas in the can did on Ianto, but it's not like we've asked the man who did this."

"He hasn't been here since the two of us woke up," Ianto explained.

"How long has that been?" I asked.

"About eight minutes for me, I'd say," Ianto answered. "Maybe five for Tosh? I couldn't see when exactly she woke up."

"Probably about five minutes, yeah," Tosh nodded. "I wasn't up for very long before I asked if anyone else was."

"Whoever this guy is, he's good," Ianto said. "Very clever. He tied the knots so that if we try to wiggle around to loosen them, they just get tighter."

"Oh. Shiny," I replied sarcastically. None of us wanted to say it, but things really didn't look good.

Over the next few minutes, the rest of the team came around, one by one. No one, not even Jack, had any clue as to what was happening – or why. But we didn't have to wait too long to find out, as just a couple of minutes after we had all finally woken up, our assailant decided to show himself.

He came out from behind the door to the info center – he must have been watching us on the CCTV behind the counter, to know just when to come out. I have to admit, for someone who managed to take out the entire Torchwood team, he didn't exactly look all that threatening; he wasn't very tall, and was pretty thin. The only thing that made him appear capable of what he had just done was the crazy look in his eye – it was visible even from across the Hub.

He looked at each of us in turn, then smiled. Walking slowly over to us, he said, "You're awake. Good! Did you enjoy your nap? I'm sure you all could have used it. You're Torchwood; you're always busy. Really, you should be thanking me."

"Who the hell are you?" Owen snapped.

"You wouldn't know. You weren't here then," the man answered calmly. "Your boss might be able to tell you, though." He turned to Jack. "Or do you not remember me? It's been a while, Jack. In fact, I'd almost understand if you'd forgotten me, if it weren't for the fact that_ I_ remember _you_. I'm not supposed to remember you, though, am I? No, I'm not. But I do. Now, isn't that interesting?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Jack said with gritted teeth. "Untie us, _now_."

"Or what?" The man asked with a smile. "You'll glare at me? You're really in no position to make demands, Harkness. Besides, aren't you even the least bit curious about what's going on?"

"No," came Jack's matter-of-fact response.

The man shook his head. "I think you're lying. I think you're just _dying_ to find out who I am, and why I've tied you all up. You just don't want to admit it. Well, lucky for you, you don't have to; I'm going to tell you anyway."

"Oh, goody," Owen muttered under his breath.

I don't think he'd meant for the man to hear him (though with Owen, you never can be sure), but whatever Owen's intentions, the man did hear him. Turning to face Owen, he said, "You know, I wasn't planning on killing you lot. But if you're going to insist upon being so rude, I may make an exception for you, just to be rid of the annoyance."

Not one to be shut down so easily, Owen opened his mouth to make, I'm sure, some sort of sarcastic reply. Hoping to avoid any unnecessary killings, though, I decided to cut him off before he could say anything. "If you don't mind my asking," I started diplomatically (like I said, I wanted to avoid unnecessary killings), "if you don't plan on killing us, then, er… why are we tied up?"

"A logical question," the man answered. "You're all tied up because I couldn't risk you trying to stop me from doing what I came here to do."

"Which is?" Jack asked.

"Aha! See, I told you that you were curious!" The man chuckled. "Well, let me explain." He cleared his throat and stood up a bit straighter, as if preparing to make a speech. "Eleven years, three months, and twelve days ago, my wife died. Up until four years, seven months, and five days ago, I believed she was killed in a tragic hit-and-run accident. I missed her, so, so much, but I'd started moving on with my life and had come to terms with the fact that sometimes, tragedies happen. They can't be avoided. They strike randomly and without warning, and all you can do is pick yourself up and continue living – that's what the person who died would have wanted for you.

"But, like I said, four years, seven months, and five days ago, something changed. I was walking down the street that night, just trying to get home, when I saw what looked like two people having a brawl in the road ahead of me. I was going to call the police when one of the fighters got caught in the light from a street lamp. That was when I realized that it wasn't a fight I was seeing, but an attack – an attack on some poor fellow by a hideous, man-eating _thing_. It was built like a man, but larger, with wrinkled brown skin.

"At first, I was too shocked and confused to do anything. But not too long after first seeing the creature for what it was, I started to remember. The memories started off unclear, jumbled, foggy; but, they got clearer in time. I could see, in my mind, my wife getting attacked by one of those creatures, on a night not too different to that one. I remembered trying to fight it off, but being tossed aside like I weighed nothing. Then I remembered a black SUV pulling up, that said 'Torchwood' on the side. I remembered a woman jumping out of the car with what looked like a can of mace, and spraying it at the creature. She was followed by two men – one of them tackled the creature and handcuffed it, while the other saw to my wife." The man turned to Jack. "You, Harkness, were the man doing the tackling. I remembered you as clear as day."

"What can I say? I'm a memorable kind of guy," Jack replied, in typical Jack-fashion.

The man ignored Jack's comment – which was probably good, for Jack's sake – to continue with his story. "As if my memory summoned you, suddenly a black SUV with 'Torchwood' on the side entered the street. I stayed just long enough to see you, Harkness, get out of the SUV – looking exactly the same as I remembered you. Then I ran home.

"I tried to ignore the memories, but over the next couple of weeks, they became more and more insistent. I didn't want to believe them, but somehow, I knew they were right. My wife wasn't hit by a car, she was killed by some terrible monster – and you Torchwood lot were entirely unable to save her."

"We tried," Jack said. "We always try. But sometimes, we just get there too late. If we could have saved your wife, believe me, we would have."

"But that's just it, isn't it?" The man asked, a bit of the madness from earlier creeping back into his voice. "All you would have needed to do was be a little bit earlier, and my wife would have survived."

"We can't control that," Jack said. "We leave as soon as we find out about a Weevil sighting – but we can't do anything until we know about it."

"You could have driven a little faster," the man said, his voice starting to shake. I could tell he was starting to lose his grip on sanity, even more so than before. "You could have gotten out of the car quicker. You, Harkness, could have been more speedy in getting that thing away from my wife. Seconds, Harkness. That's all my wife might have needed. Seconds. And you could have saved seconds."

"I'm sorry," Jack said. He sounded like he genuinely meant it.

"That won't bring my wife back," the man responded. "Nothing will. But I at least want to see justice served." The man took a couple of steps toward Jack. "You and your crew let my wife die, while I stood there and watched. Now it's your turn, Harkness."

Ianto let out a quiet, "No!" I don't think he wanted the man to hear him, but he did.

"Yes," he replied. "I think this is what you do, Torchwood. Sure, you save lives on a grand scale, but do you ever think about the consequences? Do you know what you put people through? I don't think you understand." There were tears in the man's eyes now, and his hands were shaking. He was definitely reaching his breaking point. "So, I'm going to show you. I'm going to force you to see what it's like to watch someone you care about die while you sit there, unable to do a thing. That way, maybe you'll remember that as you go to 'save' people from now on. Maybe no one else will end up like me."

What happened next, happened so fast that I doubt any of us could have stopped it even if we weren't tied up. The man pulled out a gun (which had been very well-concealed up until then) and shot Jack. Then, he shot himself. Both men were dead.

The five of us left sat in silence for a moment, trying to process the events of the last few seconds. It was Gwen who finally broke the silence. "Oh, my God." She paused. "How… How did he even _manage_ all this? It's not like we go about advertising our location, is it? How did he find us?"

"And why didn't the RetCon work?" Owen added.

"Sometimes, if you really want to, you can override the effects of the RetCon," Tosh answered. "It's extremely rare, but possible, especially with a memory as tragic as that man's. It's hard to forget something like that, even with the help of RetCon. How he found us, though… I have no idea."

Just then, Jack came back to life with a gasp. He looked over at the five us tied up on the floor. "You guys alright?" (Shouldn't we be asking him that?) We all nodded.

As if responding to my thought, Ianto asked, "What about you?"

Jack chuckled. "Me? Oh, I'm fine. Almost starting to get used to this," he added, with a not-entirely-genuine-looking smile. He sighed. "Ok, first things first. Getting untied." He looked around the room, somewhat puzzled. "Huh. This could get… complicated."

"Well, I've got all manner of sharp objects down by the operating table," Owen supplied. "Cutting the rope will be no problem, if anyone can manage to get to the equipment."

"It's possible that Cate and I might be able to coordinate ourselves enough to get down there," Ianto said. "I've seen it done on television, anyway, two people who are tied like this working together to get up and get untied. I can't make any guarantees, but it… might work," he finished somewhat uncertainly.

I was willing to give it a go, and with a nod from Jack, off Ianto and I went. It wasn't easy, but somehow the two of us did manage to stand up and walk (if you can call it walking; it was more like shimmying or shuffling) down to the infirmary. Grabbing a sharp instrument with which to cut the rope proved to be yet another challenge, and _actually _cutting it proved to be a hazard to the continuing attachment of our hands to our arms. However, after what felt like ages of extremely meticulous scalpel-work from Ianto (and a lot of praying from me), the rope fell to the ground, leaving the two of us intact.

"We're free!" I exclaimed as a beaming Ianto gave me a quick hug. I grabbed another sharp-looking object from the operating table, and Ianto and I ran back up the others to get them out of their confines.

Once we were all able to move around again, Owen voiced the question we were all wondering. "Jack, what the hell was that all about?"

Jack sighed. "It's hard to lose someone that you love," he started. "Everyone struggles with it, but some people… Some people really just can't take it, in the end. It drives them crazy." He turned to look at the body of the man who'd attacked us. "All I can figure is that that's what happened to this poor man. Especially when he remembered exactly what it was that killed his wife. Such a strange way to lose someone…" he trailed off.

"He wouldn't even be able to talk to anyone about it," Gwen said. "How could he? Everyone would think he was completely mad if he said that some alien creature killed his wife. He had to keep it all inside." Gwen shook her head. "No wonder it destroyed him." Jack nodded, while the rest of us just looked at the ground.

Jack took a deep breath. "Alright. Time to clean up. Owen, if you could take care of the body, I'll deal with the cover story."

With that, we all split up and went about our various businesses. It still amazes me how… I'm not even sure what the right word for Torchwood is. Resilient? Probably. Unshakeable? Mostly, yeah. Unfeeling? I don't know. I don't _think_ so. They're all such lovely people, and they've been nothing but kind and caring towards me – they didn't have to be, either; they could have treated me like I was just someone they were forced to deal with, after all. But they can bounce back from something like this so quickly! Some man, who'd been driven insane by the death of his wife, had just tied us all up, killed Jack, and killed himself, and yet just a few minutes after everything had been settled, they all went back to work as usual. Maybe that's because, in a way, this is work as usual at Torchwood. Or, maybe they were just doing a brilliant job of keeping their discomfort hidden – maybe, because I didn't mention my discomfort to any of them, they're thinking the same thing about me right now. I really don't know. All that I do know is that Gwen was right, way back in the beginning of the first series: working for Torchwood really is "one hell of a job."


	11. WibblyWobbly, TimeyWimey

_A/N: I realized I didn't mention in the last chapter that I don't own "Torchwood" or "Doctor Who" or any of that fun stuff, and that I'm not getting paid, etc… So there, I mentioned it first here so as not to forget._

_And yeah, I was right – I have these closing chapters planned out so specifically that I can get them written quite quickly! Yay!_

_As I mentioned vaguely in the last chapter's author's note, this chapter and the next two are the last ones. (Funnily enough, I wound up with a total of 13 chapters, with a three-part finale. I didn't even plan that!) But, also like I mentioned way back in the beginning, it's only "the end" in that the story is switching locations. Cate isn't going away – but there'll be more detail on that in the final chapter here. For now, just know that this is the first part of the "Torchwood" finale, as it were!_

_As always, thank you very much for reading, and enjoy!_

* * *

September 27, 2008

You have _got _to be kidding me.

To say that the current state of affairs is ridiculous would be an understatement. It all started this morning… Just like every other morning, I made and delivered everyone's coffee. Then, having nothing else managerial that needed doing, I headed down to continue examining the records for Void stuff, as usual. Except that today turned out to be anything but "usual."

There's a little chest of drawers by one of the sets of vaults; I always leave the 3-D glasses in the top drawer of this chest, so they don't get misplaced. This morning, however, they weren't there. Though this was puzzling, I didn't really think too much of it. I thought I remembered leaving the glasses in their normal place yesterday, but I could have been wrong; it also wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that one of the others had needed the glasses for something (what I don't know, but it was conceivable) and had just forgotten to put them back where they found them. There were perfectly logical reasons for the disappearance of the 3-D glasses, so I simply headed back upstairs to see if Jack had any clue as to what might have happened to them.

That's when things started getting really bizarre.

I knocked on the door to Jack's office, and he motioned for me to come in. "Jack," I said, "You wouldn't happen to know if anyone needed the 3-D glasses sometime between yesterday afternoon and now? They aren't in the top drawer where I usually leave them, and I swear I didn't put them anywhere different yesterday."

At first, Jack just looked at me. I was a little worried that he was angry at me for not knowing where the glasses were, but it didn't take me long to realize that the look on his face wasn't anger. It was pure confusion. He blinked at me a couple of times, then asked, "What did you say you can't find?"

"The 3-D glasses, you know, to examine the stuff in the vaults for Void stuff." I honestly just figured that he hadn't heard me correctly, and that that was why he was so confused. When the perplexed look on his face didn't fade with my clarification, though, I started to feel equally puzzled. "3-D glasses?" I repeated, as more of a question than a statement. "As suggested by the Doctor? To look for Void stuff?"

"Cate…" Jack paused, the look of confusion finally fading slightly, but only to be replaced by one of worry. I have to admit that I was starting to get more than a little anxious, too. "Cate, there never were any 3-D glasses. And the Doctor certainly never suggested that we get any. Why would he do that?"

"To look for Void stuff!" I answered. "To see if anything down there has come from a different dimension! 3-D glasses help you see the remnants of the Void…" I trailed off when it became clear that Jack, for some reason, had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

Jack looked at me with genuine concern. "Are you sure you didn't dream this?"

"Yes, I'm sure!" I exclaimed. "At least… I think I'm sure." Now that he mentioned it, for all I knew, I _could_ have dreamt it all. It's not like my life wasn't crazy enough to be a dream, after all. "I don't know, maybe I did dream it. Maybe I'm dreaming this, now, and when I wake up I'll laugh at myself and find the 3-D glasses right where I left them." I shook my head. "No, no, I'm _not _dreaming now, and I _didn't _dream up the glasses!" I sighed. "But, really… You really don't think the Doctor ever told you to get 3-D glasses?"

"No, never," Jack responded.

"So, when the Master had you two held captive on the Valiant – "

Jack cut me off. "Woah, when the who had us held what on the where?"

"You really, genuinely have no idea what I'm talking about," I said, more to myself than to him.

"No, Cate, I'm sorry," he answered. "Look, I haven't seen the Doctor since he left me after the Daleks, you know that. We talked about that; you'd seen it on TV! And in all the time I spent with him, he never mentioned 3-D glasses or a master or anything valiant."

"That's…" There was so much wrong with what he'd just said that I didn't know where to begin. "What do you mean, not since the Daleks? Moreover, what do you mean, we talked about it? We never talked about anything from the Bad Wolf Corporation!"

"Cate," Jack started seriously, "are you feeling alright? I can get Owen to take a look at you, if you want."

"No, I'm…" I considered saying that I was fine, but then I realized that that wasn't quite true. I was far too confused to be "fine." I sighed. "I don't know, Jack. I really don't know." I paused. "Do me a favor, please? Refresh my memory: what do you mean, not since the Daleks?"

"The Doctor left me on the space station after the fight with the Daleks," Jack sighed. "He probably figured I was dead… Hell, I _was _dead for a while, wasn't I?" He shook his head. "That was it. That was the last I ever saw of him."

Now, I thought we might have been getting somewhere. What he'd just said had actually been accurate for a while – for the whole first season of _Torchwood_ back home. I didn't know how it might have happened, but I began to think that maybe, I'd somehow gone back in time, to before the Doctor landed in Cardiff to refuel. Normally that would seem completely ridiculous (and a part of me still thought that it was), but thinking about it, it wouldn't have been the first time the timeline got all wonky in this dimension. I decided, then, to go along with what Jack was saying, to see if I could find out anything else about this possible time slip.

"Of course," I said. "How could I forget?" I paused. He'd looked so sad when he'd said that he hadn't seen the Doctor in so long. Assuming we had gone back in time, somehow, I figured that I could give Jack a little hint about the future, as long as I didn't make it obvious that I _knew_ it was going to happen. "Hey, you know, you might find the Doctor again one day, right? He can be anywhere, at any time! And he likes Britain, which makes it more likely that he'll show up _here_ at some point! It may not be likely, but it's not impossible, is it?"

Jack smiled sadly at me. "Maybe I'll run into one of his older regenerations one day, if he ever traveled to the future then. But I won't be able to talk to him, will I? The Doctor didn't know me when we met during World War II, which means that I never met him in a past form."

"Ok, fair point," I nodded. "But there's always _your _Doctor. Or a future regeneration! It could happen, right?"

I didn't like the look Jack gave me at that point. At all. I liked his next statement even less. "Cate… You know that I can never see my Doctor again, or any of his future forms."

"Er, I do?" I asked, a bit worried. I really didn't like the sound of that "never."

"Of course you do." Jack sounded bewildered. "You're the one who told me. You saw it on the TV show. The Doctor died, Cate."

"What!?" I exclaimed. "But – no he – _what!?_" I knew I didn't like the sound of that "never." But I also knew that the Doctor was certainly not dead. He'd almost died a couple of times, and of course even regenerated once, but actually _died_? Permanently? That didn't happen.

"Cate, seriously, are you feeling alright?" Jack asked with concern.

"Not anymore, I'm not!" I answered. "How do you mean, dead!? He's not – I never saw – The Doctor did not die, Jack! I know he didn't! In fact, that's the only thing I've been completely certain of in this entire conversation!"

"But _you _explained what happened, Cate," Jack said patiently. I think he was starting to think I'd totally lost my mind – and I guess I can't really blame him for that. I must have sounded crazy, to him. "The Doctor was hiding as a human, because there were these aliens who wanted the Time Lords' ability to live forever –"

"The Family of Blood," I interrupted, though I was speaking more to myself than to Jack. At least I was starting to get some real temporal hints, now.

"Yeah, that's what you'd called them," Jack responded. "Anyway, the Doctor's human self couldn't bring himself to give up his life to bring the Doctor back. He gave the Family what they wanted: the watch that contained his real self – his Time Lord self – and lived the rest of his life as a human. That human, John Smith, has been dead since 1965."

I paused, taking that all in. "Right. Okay. And I told you this?"

"Yes."

"Then why do I remember something _completely _different!?" I practically shouted. I was starting to lose patience – not with Jack (it wasn't his fault), but with the situation in general. I had no clue what was going on, but I knew it couldn't be good, and I was getting tired of being unable to solve the mystery.

Jack, though, thankfully seemed to have enough patience for the two of us (confused though I was, I did note that I was lucky that he chose to suspend his down-to-business, Torchwood-leader attitude for this conversation with me). "I really don't know, Cate," he said. "We did do some research and found that what you told us happened in the show was slightly different from what was recorded here – "

I cut him off again. "How different?"

"Well, you said that there was a big battle with the Family of Blood before John Smith gave them the watch, but there was no mention anywhere of a fight around that time," Jack answered. "And we found obituaries for the people the Family took over to gain physical forms – they all led long, healthy lives; they didn't die in 1913. And no, none of this was a Torchwood cover-up. Trust me, I checked the records carefully. So there were those differences… But everything else that we found matched up with your story from the show. The obituary we found for John Smith described the Doctor's human form perfectly – and that man died in 1965. I'm sorry, Cate; believe me, I am so sorry. But that's how it happened."

"Except that it didn't! It couldn't have!" The fire I'd had just moments before was gone, replaced by sheer disbelief. Jack started to say something, but I stopped him. "No, Jack, really. Something is very, very, _very_ wrong here. Time's gone all… all wibbly-wobbly!" I paused. "Oh, my God, if the Doctor was gone after the Family, he never even said that, did he?" I shook my head, realizing that Jack, of course, didn't know what I was talking about – and that it really didn't matter. "Jack, seriously. You have no recollection of the Master?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Jack answered.

"You really don't remember," I said quietly, still trying to process what was happening. "Or maybe… Maybe it really didn't happen?" It was possible, I supposed. I tried to think of a way to find that out. Then I realized: there was one major event that the Master caused that was not affected by going back to the beginning of that year. If for some reason Jack had just had his memory erased, that one event would still stand. If the whole thing with the Master had never occurred, though, the effects of that event wouldn't exist. "Jack," I said, "how's the American president?"

Jack looked quite confused – in his defense, that must have seemed like a very random question – but answered politely. "He's… He's fine, last I heard. He was just mentioned in the paper today, so I assume he's alright, yeah."

"Not dead? Actually, yeah, better question, no American presidents have died recently?"

"No, Cate."

"Ok, good. And just to make certain, what's today's date?"

"September 27, 2008."

So it really was today – I mean, the day that it was supposed to be after yesterday, when I still had the 3-D glasses and no one thought that the Doctor was dead. Which meant that the whole thing was the Master was definitely supposed to have already happened. But clearly, if the American president was still alive… it hadn't.

"Right. So. Something is most definitely, 100-percent certainly _wrong_," I said. "You don't just not remember the Master, it never happened. But I don't understand, why…" I trailed off as I realized the answer to my question. "Of course!" I started to rattle things off at a speed that would have made the Tenth Doctor proud. "If the Doctor never came back to Cardiff to refuel, which was well after the escapade with the Family of Blood, then you never ran into the TARDIS, which means she never wound up flying to the end of the universe, which means Professor Yana never turned back into the Master, which means the Master never came to Earth! Of _course_!" I took a breath and slowed down considerably when I realized what that all meant. "But if the Doctor never came back to Cardiff… I guess that means that he really is…" I couldn't quite bring myself to say it.

Luckily, Jack did it for me. "Dead."

I nodded, but it quickly turned into a vigorous head-shake. "But that's still not right! That's not how it's supposed to be! Jack, John Smith _did_ give up his life! The Doctor came back! All that stuff I just said, that's what _really _happened! Something is very wrong."

Jack stood up and walked over to me. "Ok, Cate," he said, putting his arm around my shoulders and leading me to a chair, "I really think you should sit down for a bit; take a little break."

I pulled away. "No! How can I take a break!? Time's gone all funky and I'm the only one who knows how it's _supposed _to go! I work for Torchwood now – I have a job to do!"

"I'm glad to see that you're so dedicated, but in that case, as your boss I'm going to have to order you to take a break. _Now._" Jack put his arm around me again and this time led me to the chair with a bit more force.

Clearly I wasn't going to win this, so I decided to play along. I figured that at the very least, I could use the break to try and work out what the heck was going on. "Ok. Fine," I said as I sat down. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I just need to clear my head."

Jack nodded. "Good girl." He sat back down at his desk and started leafing through some paper work.

Meanwhile, I ran through everything that I knew about the situation at hand. Apparently, whatever had gone wrong, went wrong during or after the ordeal with the Family of Blood. Something, it seemed, had changed the timeline, to make it so that John Smith never changed back into the Doctor. I tried to think if the Doctor had ever encountered any alien species capable of doing something like that; I couldn't come up with anything, but admittedly my knowledge of the original series is pretty sparse, so I definitely could have missed something there. The point still stood, however, that something was definitely not right. I didn't know – I still don't know – what caused it, but I'll be damned if I'm going to just let it be. I remembered what Rose said: being with the Doctor teaches you that you don't just sit back and take it when something is wrong, you make a stand, you say "no." Trouble is, at that point I had no idea how to do that.

I looked around Jack's office absent-mindedly. I didn't really focus on any one thing – at least until I noticed an interesting newspaper clipping. Jack had saved the article on Margaret Blaine – the Slitheen woman who'd become mayor of Cardiff – and her Blaidd Drwg project. Blaidd Drwg… Bad Wolf. The context of the part of Rose's speech I'd just been thinking about came back to me, then. She didn't know how to save the Doctor at that point, either, but that didn't stop her. So, I decided, I wasn't going to let it stop me, either.

I figured that the only thing that I could do was go back to 1913 and convince the Doctor – rather, John Smith – to make the right decision (again). But that's far easier said than done, even at Torchwood. I'm sure that I could find the TARDIS and take that back (I would assume that the Doctor left Emergency Protocol One in place with Martha, so she could just hop back in the TARDIS and be taken home if anything ever went wrong)… except that I have no idea how to make it go. I could pry open the grate and look into the Heart of the TARDIS… except that that has been proven to be an exceptionally bad idea (though admittedly quite effective). Attempting to use the Rift also seemed like an exceedingly dangerous plan – it might just bring about the end of the world (again) or something. So I knew what I had to do, but I didn't know how to do it.

I gazed around again, out of ideas for the time being. But, once again, something random in Jack's office caught my eye: his Vortex Manipulator! The gears starting turning in my head again… If Jack never saw the Doctor again after the battle with the Daleks (which it's been established he hasn't), then the Doctor never stopped the Vortex Manipulator from working! It's still functional! Granted, it's even more temperamental than the TARDIS, apparently… But it seems, at this point, to be my best bet. Assuming, of course, that I can figure out how it works. Or even manage to get to it in the first place – it's sitting right on Jack's desk, but it's not like I can just grab it, can I? But at least it was a plan.

Once I'd reached that conclusion, I decided to see if Jack would go back to work (whatever that would be – clearly I wasn't going to be examining the vaults). "I think you were right, Jack," I said. "I just needed to sit down, I guess… I'm feeling much better now." That wasn't a lie, either – I did feel better after sitting down. It's just that it wasn't the sitting that did it, it was the planning.

"Great," Jack smiled at me. "No more confusion over what happened?"

"Nope," I lied. Thank goodness I'd done a lot of acting back home. "I don't know what came over me. I must have just… dreamed all that up and really wanted it to be true." Yeah, now I was lying.

But, somehow, Jack believed me (maybe I'm a better actress than even I thought). "Good," he nodded. "All the same… I know this job can get to a person's head, especially at the beginning. But that was a pretty extreme case. Why don't you take the rest of the day off?" He paused. "Let me rephrase that, as the whole 'suggesting' thing didn't work too well before: take the rest of the day off. Please. And tomorrow, when you come in, I'm going to have Owen run some scans on you."

"He's not going to find anything wrong with me; I'm perfectly fine, it's the world that's gone bonkers," I thought to myself. But all that came out was, "That's probably a good idea, yeah. Will do. I'll just… er…" I realized that I couldn't really get back to Gwen's apartment without Gwen, and there was no reason for her to go home early. I mentioned this to Jack.

"Good point," he said. "Just… sit around and wait, I guess. Sorry about that."

"That's fine," I said. "I've got my laptop; I can poke around the internet for a few hours." He nodded, and I left his office to head to the couch in the middle of the Hub. I got a good number of strange looks (five, in fact) from the rest of the team, but they accepted my "It's a long story that I'll explain later" excuse. Tosh even gave me the book of SuDoKus that she had in her desk drawer, so that I'd have something to do.

Little did she know, though, that I _did_ have something to do. When I told Jack that I was going to "poke around" online, I actually had something a bit more specific in mind: I was going to do some research. If I was going to try to get back to the Doctor/John Smith, I figured I might want to know where I was going. I knew it was a school, obviously, but I didn't know its name, or its exact location. But, with a bit (okay, a lot of searching – it's a _very_ common name) of searching, I was able to find the obituary of Mr. John Smith.

Unfortunately, there was no picture with the obituary, but there was plenty of information confirming that this was the correct Mr. John Smith. It said that he was survived by his wife, Joan (Redfern) Smith, two daughters, and a son. (Another hint that this man was definitely the Doctor: his daughters were named Rose and Sarah, and his son was Alistair. There's no way that's a coincidence; it had to be subconscious memories.) And, just as Jack had said, the date of death was listed as 1965 (April 30, to be precise, at age 87). Thankfully, the obituary did also mention the name of the school that he had taught at for 25 years: the Farringham School for Boys, in Farringham, Norfolk, England.

After a couple more hours of (actual) poking around on the internet, many SuDoKus, and an hour or so of keeping Ianto company in the info center, it was closing time. Gwen and I headed back to her apartment; after dinner, I gave her the abridged version of what had gone on with Jack earlier today. She was concerned, but was happy to know that at least Owen would be examining me for anything fishy in the morning.

So now I'm left to wait for a convenient time to take Jack's Vortex Manipulator and head to the Farringham School for Boys in 1913. Until then, I'll have to keep pretending that I had some sort of momentary instance of mental instability this morning, and that in reality all is right with the world (_wrong_). I wish I could tell them, but I can't risk them not believing me. It's highly unlikely that they would believe me, too, since apparently I'm the one who gave them the information they're currently going by. And I can't have them thinking that I'm crazy – they'll never take their eyes off me then, and then how can I get to the Vortex Manipulator to fix this mess? So, for now, I'll just pretend that everything is fine. But next time the whole team goes out on a mission, leaving me to mind the Hub… I'll be off.

* * *

_A/N 2: I just want to mention that I made up the bit about John Smith's life and death, obviously, because it never happened in the show. I also sort of made up the location of the school, but not entirely. Farringham, the town, was the location used in the original __book__ that the episodes were based on; but, the school in the book had a different name (I used the school name from the show). So I kind of combined the television show and the book for this, because I couldn't find anything that gave a location for the school shown on TV. If anyone has it, feel free to yell at me for not doing proper research!_


	12. The Choice

_A/N: As always, I don't own anything (I did create Cate, though). Also as always, thank you very, very much for reading and reviewing! Enjoy the chapter!_

_(I also should mention that, yes, I did get this idea from "The Sarah Jane Adventures." It just seemed like too good an opportunity to ignore! However, although Cate probably would have watched "The Sarah Jane Adventures," they hadn't started airing – in the U.K. or the U.S. – before she wound up in the other dimension. So, she's never seen any "Sarah Jane" episodes, let alone the one this idea came from, which was towards the middle or end of the series. Hence why she doesn't immediately figure out what's going on – or, you know, contact Sarah Jane for help.)_

* * *

October 8, 2008

This morning – while still waiting (somewhat impatiently) for the team to all go out on a mission without me – I noticed that there was a bit of a flaw in my plan. Even if the team all went away without me, the Vortex Manipulator was going to go with Jack. He wasn't always wearing it just doing work in the Hub, but with some thought, I realized that I couldn't remember a time when he didn't wear it out "on the field." This presented a problem for me: I needed to be alone in order to manage to disappear back in time, but I would never be by myself in the Hub while the Vortex Manipulator was still there, too.

Thankfully, it didn't take me long to realize the solution. As mentioned, Jack doesn't always wear the Vortex Manipulator around the Hub – sometimes, he leaves it on his desk, which is how I'd noticed it in the first place. What I needed to do, then, was figure out some way to get Jack out of his office, grab the Vortex Manipulator off of the desk, find an unpopulated area of the Hub to disappear from, fix the time line, and return in time to put the Vortex Manipulator back where it belongs before Jack could notice that it was missing. None of this would be easy, of course, but I didn't see another option. And, an added bonus to this plan: no more waiting around. As soon as I figured out how to get to the Vortex Manipulator, I could get my plan underway.

Conveniently, I remembered, I hadn't cleaned Jack's office in a while…

So, after lunch today, I put my refurbished plan into action. I started with other areas of the Hub, to make it appear as if this was a legitimate cleaning operation – I even politely asked the rest of the team to leave _their_ desks for a few minutes so I could properly clean their workspaces. I wanted everything to seem like it was standard operating procedure, so that Jack wouldn't get suspicious.

When I was done with the rest of the Hub, I took a deep breath and knocked on Jack's door. He waved me in, and I immediately scanned his desk for the Vortex Manipulator. Luckily, it was there – on the edge of the desk, too. It was a perfectly precarious place to be; if Jack _did_ realize that it went missing after I cleaned his office, it would be so easy to simply say that it must have gotten knocked into my bucket of cleaning supplies.

"Jack, would you mind if I took over your office for a few minutes?" I asked. "I haven't given it a good cleaning in a while," I continued, holding up my bucket, "so if now isn't too inconvenient…" I shrugged. "I could come back later if you can't leave now, of course." I figured I should add that, so that I didn't seem like I needed to get in there right then.

Jack looked at the paperwork covering his desk. "Nah, I can do this down there; it's fine. I suppose this place could use some help," he chuckled. He gathered a stack of papers and headed towards the door. "Thanks, Cate. Oh, but just be careful – it's kind of cluttered in here," he added before leaving.

"I know it's cluttered," I thought to myself. "That's exactly what I'm counting on." I set about cleaning the office for a little while; then, when I was about half-way done, I carefully slipped the Vortex Manipulator in my bucket. Success! I quickly (but efficiently) finished my cleaning job and headed out.

"All set," I said to Jack, who was sitting at the coffee table doing his paper work.

"Great, thanks," he smiled. He began organizing the papers strewn over the table; I was surprised when he handed a small bunch to me. "By the way, would you mind filing these in the vaults for me?"

"Oh, sure, no problem," I said. Really, "no problem" was an understatement, considering that he'd just given me the perfect excuse to find myself in an area of the Hub where I'd be alone. I took the papers and headed to the closet to put the cleaning supplies away (sneaking the Vortex Manipulator of the bucket first, of course), then went down to the vaults.

Sure enough, I was the only one down there. I filed Jack's papers away, then took the Vortex Manipulator out of my pocket. I just needed to figure out how to work it…

I opened the flap, and was confronted with far more buttons than I would have liked: a big, round one, and three smaller, oval-shaped ones. I said a quick prayer, took a deep breath, and started trying the buttons. The first two oval buttons I pressed did nothing useful, but the last one gave me what I needed. The little screen read, "Choose new location." However, there was no keyboard to do any typing, so I wondered how precisely I was supposed to do that. I tried hitting that oval button again; I was pleasantly surprised when the letter "A" appeared on the screen. I was even more pleased when hitting the button again produced a "B". It took a while (and I figure there must be a more efficient way to program the thing), but I managed to type in my destination: the Farringham School for Boys, Farringham, Norfolk, England, November 12, 1913, 9:00pm. Assuming that the only button I had yet to hit – the round one – was the one that would activate the Vortex Manipulator, I took another deep breath and gave it a firm press…

… And promptly found myself sitting on my very sore behind. It's a good thing I was sitting down, too, because my head was spinning. After ten seconds or so, though, I felt better, and was able to take in my surroundings. I stood up and looked around; I seemed to be outside, in a field, on a moderately chilly but sunny day. There was no one around, but in the distance I could see a large, Gothic-looking building.

That was when it really hit me – that building was the Farringham School! The Vortex Manipulator, that supposedly unreliable piece of machinery, had actually _worked_! Or well, had mostly worked, anyway: I did notice that it was daytime, when I'd been planning on arriving at night, not too long before John Smith was going to make his choice. As long as I was close, though, I didn't care if I had to hang around for a few extra hours. I just hoped that I _was_ close; conceivably, I could be a decade early, and I didn't think that hanging around for _that_ long was a good idea. But of course, there was only one way to find out, so I started my trek toward the school.

I'd just about reached the gate when I realized that my clothes were going to look positively ridiculous. I was already expecting to stand out like a sore thumb – a young woman, who wasn't a maid or nurse, at an all-boys school – but I hadn't quite gotten as far as my outfit. But, at that point, there was nothing I could do (I had no money to run to a store – I hadn't had my purse on me when I left), so I shrugged to myself and put to use something I'd learned from watching "Doctor Who": if you act like there's nothing unusual about you, people are less likely to question you. (This was one of those moments I was very, very happy that I'd done a lot of acting back home.)

Trying to appear as confident as possible, I strode through the gates, across the courtyard, and into the building. I briefly considered finding the Headmaster and asking permission to speak to Mr. Smith, but changed my mind when I realized that he might say no (or ask to see identification of some sort, which, like my money, was in my purse in the Hub). So I chose to wander the halls of the school until I found his office – all the while pretending that I had every right to be there in my bizarre clothes.

Luckily, although I garnered quite a few strange looks from some of the boys, no one actually stopped me to ask any questions. After a while, though, I almost began to wish someone would – then, _I _could ask _them_ for directions to Mr. Smith's office. The school was larger than I'd thought, and I was pretty much lost. I didn't want to draw attention to myself by initiating a conversation… but after a few more minutes of wandering, I realized that that was going to be my only option if I ever hoped to find Mr. Smith.

I saw a maid heading down an adjacent corridor, and decided that she would be mostly safe to ask. "Excuse me, Miss!" I called after her in my best English accent (my clothes were strange enough; I didn't want my American accent to make me stick out even more). She turned around to face me – and I stifled a gasp. It was Jenny, Martha's maid friend who'd become the Mother! I remembered that Jack had mentioned that the people the Family had possessed hadn't actually died in 1913, and here was living proof. I was taken aback at first, but then I was glad to know that she (and assumedly all the others) really were okay. I smiled at her. "Hi, I'm sorry, but I was wondering if you could please direct me to Mr. John Smith's office?" I asked politely, still in my English accent. "I seem to have gotten somewhat turned round…"

She gave me a puzzled look. "I'm sorry, Ma'am, but have you got permission from the Headmaster? I'd just think he would have told you how to get there."

She had a good point. "Oh, of course," I said, trying to come up with an excuse. "And, he did. He did tell me how to get there, but I think I took a wrong turn somewhere. He mentioned a staircase, but I have yet to come across one. I just thought I would have found it by now, but since I haven't, I wanted to make sure that I was going the correct direction." That sounded good to me, and I hoped it would to her, too.

Jenny still looked doubtful, but seemed to accept my reply. "Right, sure then. Actually, you are going the right way. Just keep following this hall and take a left at the end; you'll see your staircase at the end of that hall. Go up one flight, take a right, and his office will be… I believe it's the second door on the left side."

I smiled extra sweetly. "Thank you very much, Miss. Have a nice day!"

"You're welcome, ma'am, and thank you! The very same to you!" She said as I headed down the hallway. She was so friendly; she didn't deserve what had happened to her when the Family invaded. I was sad that "setting the timeline right" would most likely mean letting her die again.

I followed Jenny's directions, and sure enough, found myself standing outside a door that said "Mr. John Smith." I quickly knocked on it, before I could change my mind.

A few seconds later, I was face-to-face with Mr. Smith – with the Doctor. It was really quite surreal, but I kept my amazement in check. He, like Jenny, gave me a very puzzled once-over, but was still very polite when he greeted the strange young woman at his door. "Erm… Hello, Miss. May I help you?"

"Actually, Mr. Smith, I think you can," I answered. I'd gone back to my American accent to talk to him; I was going to be talking to him about different planets, so I figured that a different country wasn't that big of a deal in the end. "My name is Cate Thomas, and…" I swallowed. "And I'm here to talk to you about the Doctor."

He blinked a few times. "I'm sorry? Which doctor might you be referring to? There are a few in the area. And, erm, why do you need to consult me? Have we met?"

"Oh, um, no, not a medical doctor," I said. "I mean…" I paused for a moment. What was I supposed to say, that I meant the 900-year-old alien Doctor with two hearts who travels through time and space in a 1960's police box? Well, yes, I guessed, I was. What else _was_ I supposed to say? "I mean _the_ Doctor; definite article, capital D. The one from Gallifrey, who travels around in a police box…" I trailed off. I expected Mr. Smith to wonder why I knew about his dreams, but I wasn't met with a look of confusion – instead, he just looked utterly lost. "Er… You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"No, Miss," he shook his head. "None at all. I'm sorry, but I really must ask you – "

He was definitely about to ask me to leave, which I could not let him do, so I cut him off. "Really, though, no idea at all?"

He sighed. "No, Miss, I do not. Not the one you described. Where on Earth is this… _Galley-free_ anyway? And what's a police box?"

"It's not actually on Earth at all, it's…" I paused again, realizing that the location of Gallifrey wasn't the most important issue. "No, something is wrong here, too. This should sound familiar to you, at the very least. You had all those dreams, and that journal!"

All of a sudden, something clouded Mr. Smith's face. Apparently, it was memory: "The Journal of Impossible Things," he said, very quietly.

"Yes! That's the one!" I smiled encouragingly. "You dreamt that you were this time-travelling adventurer – the Doctor. You were travelling through time and space with your maid, Martha, and you – " I cut myself off this time. Mr. Smith wasn't looking very well. I couldn't really blame him, of course; this was certainly a lot to swallow. "Mr. Smith?" I asked. "Are you alright?"

I don't think he heard me. He was mumbling to himself; all sorts of things that would have been in the Journal, it seemed. I caught "sonic screwdriver," "Dalek," and "killer Santa" (I smiled inwardly at that one), before I noticed that he looked on the verge of collapse.

"Okay, Mr. Smith," I said, taking him by the arm, "why don't you just have a seat, then?" I led him over to his couch (it ran through my mind that, when he felt better, he may be upset with me for coming into his room uninvited) and sat down with him.

He shook his head, and turned to me. "But… How do you know?" he asked. He was coherent again, but still very confused. "Everyone was supposed to forget! _I_ was supposed to forget! I _did_ forget! Until _you_ showed up!" I found myself on the receiving end of one those deadly Doctor glares. I shrank back in my seat. "I had a normal life – the life that I was told I had to give up – the life that I didn't even remember that I _could_ have lost until now!"

"Mr. Smith, I am so sorry, really, I am!" I meant that, too, from the bottom of my heart. I felt terribly for having to do this to him. "But it isn't supposed to be like that. You were supposed to change back into the Doctor – you _did_ change back into the Doctor, but something must have happened."

"I never agreed to change back!" he snapped. "I was about to agree – I was about to give up my life for this Doctor, whoever he is! – but then…" He paused. "Then this… this thing came into the room." He didn't sound angry anymore, just like he was trying to remember something from the back of his mind. "It said that it could give me the life I saw. It would still keep the world safe from the Family of Blood, but I could stay as me. It would make it so that this whole event never happened; everyone would forget about the fighting, and this ridiculous Doctor character, and I could live my life in peace!"

"But… that never happened," I said, more to myself than to him. "No one ever…. But clearly, someone did, because, well, here we are," I sighed, and looked pointedly at Mr. Smith. "But whoever made you those promises definitely wasn't _supposed _to be there. He must have… I don't know, invaded the timeline or something." I thought about what I'd just said. I was about to wonder aloud, "Can you even do that?" but someone spoke before I did.

"That's good! Very good, as a matter of fact. Very clever! Cate Thomas, you said your name was?"

I couldn't see the person speaking (I had my back to the area of the room that the voice was coming from), but I would have known that voice anywhere. I spun around in my seat quick as anything, and my suspicions were confirmed. There was the tenth Doctor – well, sort of "there." He was talking to me from inside the mirror above the fireplace.

It was my turn to be extremely confused – but unlike Mr. Smith, I was also extremely, extremely excited. The Doctor was talking to me! (Well, really, he had been the whole time, as Mr. Smith is the Doctor; but this was the "official" Doctor, who knew he was the Doctor.) And he thought I was clever!

I realized I should probably answer him instead of just sitting there looking shocked. "I – yes, Cate Thomas – but – how!? Where!?" So much for the clever. I got up and walked toward the mirror, trying to salvage myself. "Are you _in _the mirror?" Well, at least it was a full sentence.

"Well, not really, it's just a really good portal; a window, in a way," the Doctor answered. "I'm actually…" He paused. "In all honesty, I'm not entirely sure where I am. I was told that I'm nowhere, in no time, but if I were, I'd be in the Void, which is not only very bad, but very impossible. Plus, if I were in the Void, I wouldn't be able to communicate with you, and clearly, I can." He waved at me. "Hello!"

I couldn't believe how perky he was, given his current situation (although I have to admit, there was a small part of me that wasn't all that shocked by his pluckiness). "You're awfully cheerful for someone who's stuck in some place that doesn't even sound like it exists," I pointed out.

The Doctor smiled. "Well, it looks like I'm about to rescued! That's a happy occasion if I ever saw one. I am a bit puzzled, though, as to how you even knew I needed rescuing, and how you know me at all. Don't think we've met before, have we? Of course, it could have been in my future – "

"Excuse me!" Mr. Smith interjected. He had been sitting on the couch, staring open-mouthed at the mirror, most likely wondering at the fact that there were technically two of him in the mirror, but only one in the room. However, he apparently had come back to reality. "As all of this does seem to have quite a lot to do with me, I would be extremely appreciative if someone were to tell me exactly _what in the name of God is going on here!?_"

I felt slightly sheepish, but in his typical fashion, the Doctor didn't miss a beat. "Oh, hello! Of course, sorry about that. Well, for starters, I'm 'this ridiculous Doctor character.' Or, rather, _we're_ the Doctor. You and I are both the Doctor, but, you're me – or, us – as a human." He looked over at me. "That sounded convoluted even to me."

Mr. Smith looked at me, too, but the friendliness in the Doctor's eyes was nowhere to be found in his. "So I've been informed," he said bitterly. "Multiple times, in fact – now that I've been forced to remember that night three years ago."

"_Three years!?_" I exclaimed. I took Jack's Vortex Manipulator out of my pocket. "Stupid thing brought me here three years _late!?_"

"Hold on, that's a Vortex Manipulator!" the Doctor noticed. He gave me a scrutinizing look. "You're not a Time Agent, are you?"

"Oh, no," I answered quickly. "I'm only from 2008. Well, closing in on 2009 now, it's October, but still, no, no Time Agency. But, I work for Torchwood Three, in Cardiff. This is Jack's."

The Doctor looked confused. "No, but I stopped that from – Oh, no, no I didn't, did I? Not anymore." He nodded slowly. "Never did get the chance to do that, did I?"

"Wait, you know about that, then?" I asked. "But, weren't you taken from before that all happened?"

"You'd think that, but no," the Doctor shook his head. "You see, time is rather wibbly-wobbly, timey – "

"If I might interrupt?" Mr. Smith asked pointedly.

Even the Doctor looked embarrassed this time. "Right, sorry. Look, the thing is… Cate's right. You were supposed to agree to change back into – well, me. In fact, originally, you did agree. But Cate was right twice – that "thing" you were describing invaded the timeline. He doesn't have a name, but basically what he does is go about invading timelines and changing things up. He thrives on chaos, so he brings it wherever possible."

I nodded. "And taking the Doctor out of the equation would definitely bring chaos."

"Precisely," the Doctor responded. "So there I was, minding my own business, taking a well-deserved break on the beautiful beaches of Sorrento – the planet, not the city, although that is what it was named for – enjoying absolutely beautiful weather, when all of a sudden, POOF! Here I was. Or not-here I was, I suppose," he added thoughtfully. "Then this figure appeared, all dressed in black with this gigantic hood covering his face – which is always a bad sign, by the way – telling me…" He paused. "Well, everything I just told you. Essentially, that he just went in and changed time. Which is very, very illegal."

Mr. Smith sighed. "That is all very unfortunate, I'm sure, but what do you want me to do about it? I'm not you, Doctor. I have no special powers. What can I possibly do to change what happened?"

"Oh, you don't need any 'special powers' to fix this, Mr. Smith!" the Doctor said. "It's quite simple! All you have to do is call this being back to you and tell him you're cancelling your agreement!"

"Doctor," I started, "I don't think that 'simple' is quite the right word." I knew he hadn't meant any harm, but I also knew that the Doctor was essentially asking Mr. Smith to give up his life – technically, for a second time. That's a choice that's anything but "simple."

The Doctor looked over at Mr. Smith, and noticed the his discomforted look. "Oh. Well. True. Sorry. I meant as opposed to, to time travel, or facing a league of angry Daleks, or the Family of Blood themselves…" He trailed off.

"Yes," Mr. Smith said with a sarcastic chuckle, "all I have to do is give up my life."

"Okay, I realize that 'simple' was bad wording on my part," the Doctor replied apologetically, "but the point was that you _are _capable of it! You don't have to be me to do it!"

"Then why can't I get through the rest of my life without being you?" Mr. Smith asked.

"You could, you definitely could," I answered, "but the world – the universe! – couldn't. Mr. Smith, everything you dreamed, everything in that journal: it's all true! That's the Doctor! He saves so many people, and planets, and… And without him, who's going to protect them?"

"What about my wife?" Mr. Smith responded. "Who will protect her? You expect me to leave her alone a second time?"

The Doctor smiled sadly. "Ah yes, Joan… I'm sorry, John, I understand that this is difficult. If it's any consolation, she won't even remember any of this. If you take back your agreement, time will return to the way it had been. Technically, these past three years will never have happened. She'll remember life the way it was supposed to be – where you, John, chose to go back to being the Doctor. Which, in case you've forgotten, she encouraged you to do."

I sat back down on the couch with Mr. Smith. "Please, Mr. Smith… You said yourself, you were about to change back into the Doctor – "

"Yes, until I found out that I didn't have to give up my life to save the planet!" The poor man looked on the verge of tears.

"I'm sorry, but you've been fooled," the Doctor said. "Well, not fooled so much as taken advantage of. This whatever-he-is promised you that he'd force the Family to leave, and that you'd have a peaceful life. And I'm sure that he'll stick to that promise. But he said nothing about peace after you die, or peace on other planets that I won't be able to save if I no longer exist – he knew that you, as a human from 1913, would never even think of something like that. You thought you were saving the world while remaining yourself – and in a way you were. But only for a few extra decades. And you weren't saving other worlds at all."

I rested my hand on Mr. Smith's arm. "I don't blame you – "

"_We_ don't blame you," the Doctor interrupted.

I looked at the Doctor and gave him a small smile. "_We_ don't blame you for your choice," I corrected myself. "It's completely understandable, and you honestly thought that you were still saving the world! We don't think any less of you for anything, we only ask that you realize whatever it was that you realized three years ago, when you were about to agree to change back; that you find whatever was in you that night, again now, and pull out of your agreement." I looked back at the Doctor, silently asking him if what I'd said had been right. He nodded his approval at me.

Mr. Smith took a deep breath. "And Joan won't remember any of these past three years? She won't think I just disappeared?"

"She'll remember time as it was supposed to be, with you making this decision the night the Family attacked," the Doctor told him.

"Well," Mr. Smith said with a sad smile, "I got three extra years to live. Not many people get the chance to say that." He walked over to a small bookshelf and pulls a strange little silver box from behind a book. He twisted a corner of the box about 90 degrees, and suddenly the strange figure the Doctor had described just minutes before appeared in the room.

I let out an involuntary gasp. Mr. Smith stepped in front of me, as if to protect me from this strange creature. I have to admit that I was taken a bit by surprise. This man had to give up his life because of me (the Doctor had played a part, too, obviously, but I started it by coming in the first place), yet still, in a time of danger he would position himself to protect the problematic girl he didn't even know. He was certainly a gentleman if there ever was one.

The creature looked straight at Mr. Smith. (At least, I think it was looking at him; it was hard to tell, since, like the Doctor said, its hood completely hides its face.) "Why is it that you have called me here?" it asked, in one of the creepiest voices I have ever heard.

Mr. Smith stood up straight and tall. "I…" He paused and glanced at the Doctor, who nodded him on. "I would like to pull out of our agreement."

"Then you will die," the creature stated matter-of-factly.

"How can I die?" Mr. Smith asked. "It appears that I've never really existed in the first place." He smiled sadly at the Doctor and me in turn, and nodded. He then turned back to the creature and said, "I'm doing what I was supposed to do three years ago. I cancel our agreement."

"So be it," responded the creature. As soon as it had spoken, Mr. Smith disappeared – literally, just vanished from in front of me, as if he'd never been standing there at all. But nothing else had changed! Mr. Smith was gone, but the Doctor was still only in the mirror – and looking very, very angry.

I turned toward the creature. "What's going on? Mr. Smith canceled the agreement; shouldn't the Doctor be free now?"

I think that the creature laughed in response to my question, but I'm really not sure – the sound it made was so chilling I have trouble calling it a "laugh." "John Smith never asked to set the Doctor free, or to put things back to the way they were. He merely asked to cancel our agreement. Therefore, he does not need to be here – but that does not mean that there needs to be peace, or that the Doctor needs to be set free. Our agreement was terminated with no specific terms, so _I _choose the outcome."

"No!" I yelled. "But that's not…" I trailed off, because I had just noticed that on the floor where Mr. Smith had been standing, there was still the strange box that he had used to call this creature back. I glanced quickly at the Doctor in the mirror, and, thinking back on something he'd said earlier, began to wonder if there wasn't a way out of this after all. I looked back at the Doctor and tried to give him a look that said, "I think I have a plan." He seemed to understand, as he gave me a very tiny nod.

Once again thanking God that I had been a bit of an actress back home (although this time, I was really only half-acting), I tried to sound and appear as depressed as possible. "So, the Doctor is stuck with you, then," I said, slowly and hopefully imperceptibly edging towards the box.

"Yes," the creature answered.

I nodded sadly. "Forever." The creature nodded in response, and I sat down on the couch in (hopefully) mock defeat.

"And chaos shall reign through the universe," the creature added with a hiss.

"But, there's just this one thing I'm wondering," I said. "The Doctor had said that the mirror is like a portal, or a window."

"But he cannot get through it," the creature answered. "You see the Doctor as stuck behind glass; he sees this room as a projection in front of him. There is nothing for him to break through."

"Of course," I shook my head, "because that would be far too easy." I slowly scooted over on the couch until the little box was right in front of my feet. "But the thing about windows is, you look _through _them. You see what's on the other side. If I see the Doctor through the mirror, and if the mirror's like a window, that means he _is _on the other side." I stole one last look at the Doctor; he was smiling, so I assumed that meant that I was doing well. I took a deep breath and turned back to the creature. "And, in my experience," I said slowly, "the quickest way to free someone on the other side of a window is to break the glass!" I bent down as quickly as I could and, in one motion, picked the box up off of the floor and threw it as hard as possible at the mirror.

I watched the box fly through the air and collide with the glass. The last thing I saw before the mirror shattered was the Doctor, still smiling…

… And as suddenly as I had arrived in 1916, I was once again sitting on my very sore behind, back in the records room of the Torchwood Hub. I stayed sitting for a little while to let my head and stomach settle, then I looked around. It looked to be the Hub as I had left it this morning, but I now knew better than to be sure. I walked over to the chest of drawers where I usually keep the 3-D glasses – the chest of drawers that had started it all. I closed my eyes and opened the drawer where I usually leave the glasses; I reached my hand in… And felt the infamous 3-D glasses right in the middle of the drawer! They were back! Which had to mean that I was back, too, in 2008, where I should be – and I could only pray that that meant that time had been set right.

I was about to run straight upstairs to the main area of the Hub when I realized that I still had Jack's Vortex Manipulator in my pocket. I figured that I should really get rid of that as soon as possible; hoping that everything that I had done this morning (namely the cleaning) had still occurred whenever it was that I had arrived, I took it out of my pocket and mentally ran through what I would tell Jack about why I had it.

I walked up to the main area of the Hub; it didn't look any different than when I'd left it this morning, except for the team being in different stages of work. I smiled at Tosh who glanced up as I walked by, but otherwise headed straight to Jack's office. As always, I knocked on the door, and he waved me in.

"Hey, Jack," I started, "when I was putting the cleaning bucket away, I noticed that this was in it," I held out the Vortex Manipulator.

Jack sprang up from his desk and walked over to me. "It was?" He took back the Vortex Manipulator and turned it over in his hands, examining it.

"Yeah, I'm sorry, I have no idea how it got in there," I lied. "Had you left it on the edge of your desk, maybe? If it was, it probably just… fell in. Sorry about that." I hoped he wasn't going to be angry at me – I hadn't planned on that possibility.

But Jack smiled at me then, so I knew I didn't have to worry. "It seems to be fine; it wasn't damaged or anything. So, it's alright. I don't remember leaving it on the edge of my desk…" he paused, looking confused. Then he shook his head and finished, "But I had so much paperwork to do this morning, the exact placement of my Vortex Manipulator wasn't something I was going to notice. No harm done."

"That's good to know," I smiled. "All the same, I'll be on the lookout for it next time I clean in here, so it won't happen again."

He thanked me, and I started to head toward the door. Then I thought of a way I could do one final check to make sure that time had been put back to normal. I turned back to Jack. "Oh, and by the way, still nothing to report from the Vaults. No Void stuff yet, but I'm still looking."

"Nothing yet?" he repeated. "Alright… Well, like you said, there's still stuff left to examine. We may yet find something, eventually."

He knew what I was talking about! I forced myself not to positively beam, but couldn't suppress at least a normal-sized smile. "Yeah," I responded, "maybe we will." With that, I left his office – still smiling with the knowledge that everything was back to normal.

The rest of the day was pretty much unremarkable – though really, most things would have seemed unremarkable compared to my time in 1916. I'm glad everything's been set right here, and I hope that the Doctor's gone back to enjoying that vacation in Sorrento – I dare say that it's definitely a "well-deserved break" after being imprisoned by that creature! I just wish I could have said goodbye to him. But I guess that's how it always works, isn't it? He's gone as suddenly as he arrives. Any who knows, maybe I'll see him again, one day; he could come to visit Jack when he refuels the TARDIS, right? Maybe. Until then, at least it's back to normal life at Torchwood.


	13. A Beginning at the End

_A/N: Oh, wow, this is it! The last chapter! (Well, in a way. It'll be continuing, just… elsewhere.) As always, thank you __**so**__ much for reading and reviewing! I never expected people to like this story as much as some of you have, and I've really appreciated the feedback. I'm glad that you've stuck with the story all this way, and I hope you enjoy the last chapter!_

_P.S. Sorry the last few paragraphs are so... explainy. But I couldn't see any other way to bring this chapter - and this story as a whole - to a close._

_(And no, after all this time, I still don't own anything, except Cate.)_

* * *

October 17, 2008

I've decided that all Torchwood employees should keep, at the very least, this one simple thing in mind: no matter how ordinary the day seems to be, it can always go completely insane at any moment.

Today was one of those days. It was mid-afternoon, and Ianto and I had been sitting in the info center for about an hour; we hadn't had any customers, and had started playing "I Spy" to keep ourselves occupied. I was in the middle of trying to guess the third item that Ianto had picked when Gwen's voice came over the intercom.

"Cate?" she asked.

A bit surprised that the message seemed to be only for me, and not Ianto, I slid my chair over to the speaker. "Hey, Gwen, what's up?"

"There's someone in the Hub who'd like to see you," Gwen said.

Ianto and I exchanged a puzzled look, and shrugged at each other. I didn't know anyone in Cardiff besides the Torchwood team (and Rhys, but close enough), so I couldn't figure out for the life of me who might be coming to visit. "Um… Okay," I responded to Gwen. "Who is it?"

"Hold on," Gwen answered, and the intercom switched off. A few seconds later, Gwen was back, saying, "Well, both Jack and the visitor don't want me to tell you; they'd rather it be a surprise. But Jack wants me to assure you that the visitor is a friend, and that you'll be happy that he or she came to visit."

"He or she?" I repeated. "You can't even tell me their gender?"

"Nope," Gwen laughed. "It's all very hush-hush over here, and I've been sworn to secrecy."

"Alright, then, I suppose I'll be right over," I answered. I turned off the intercom and looked over at Ianto. "Does this sort of thing happen often?" I asked him.

"What, you mean, mysterious visitors to the Hub, coming to call for someone who doesn't even know anyone else in town?" he responded. I nodded. "Nope. This is a first. Which is impressive, seeing as just about everything else imaginable has happened at Torchwood," he finished with a smile.

I got up to head over to the connecting passageway to the Hub, but Ianto wasn't entirely done. "Oh, and Cate, I'm sure that everything's fine with this visitor of yours, but all the same…" he paused. "This is Torchwood. Just don't let your guard down. And if anything gets dangerous, just shout for me, alright?"

I smiled at him. "Thanks, Ianto," I said. "I'll definitely keep that in mind." With that, I opened the door to the passageway and walked over to the Hub.

At first glance, I didn't even see my mysterious visitor; there was no one extra in the Hub, just Owen, Tosh, and Gwen. I heard Tosh clear her throat. I looked over at her, and she nodded towards Jack's office with a smile. Redirecting my gaze to follow Tosh's nod, I immediately realized who my guest was – and just as quickly let out a tiny squeak (I think it was meant to be an, "Oh!" of understanding, but it didn't quite work.). I was at Jack's door in a flash, and was about to knock when my visitor stood up and opened the door for me.

"Hello, Cate!" the Doctor said with that thousand-watt smile of his. He shook my hand. "Nice to see you again! Er," he paused, "it is 'again,' isn't it? Please tell me you've already met me."

Still slightly in shock that the Doctor was at the Torchwood Hub in the first place, I answered uncertainly, "Well, we talked through a mirror…"

"Perfect! That's what I meant. I got a little worried when Jack said it was still October. I was aiming for November." Seeing the confusion on both my and Jack's faces, the Doctor explained, "The last time we met, Cate, you said it was October of 2008 when you'd left. Well, that gave me thirty-one days to choose from. If I picked a day too early, you wouldn't have actually gone yet, and that just would have messed everything up. I figured that if I just arrived in November, then you definitely would have gone already. I missed November, but it looks like I lucked out anyway."

"Oh. Right," I said. I took a couple of seconds to let it all sink it, then smiled at him. "Well, okay, hello! Nice to see you again, too!"

Jack walked over to me from behind his desk. "The Doctor already told me everything that happened," he said seriously.

I realized that that must mean that the Doctor told him about my stealing (well, borrowing, really) the Vortex Manipulator. Afraid that Jack was going to be angry with me, I opened my mouth to protest-slash-explain-myself, but Jack cut me off with a laugh. "Don't worry! You're not in trouble. Don't get me wrong, under any other circumstances you most certainly would be, for nicking my stuff without asking; but, in this case, I'm just really impressed that you took the initiative to fix what had gone wrong, especially when no one here believed that anything _was_ wrong at all. You couldn't get our support, so you did it on your own. And that's what Torchwood is all about: protecting the world from the threats no one else believes exists. It was a bit reckless, sure, but hey, who am I to reprimand anyone for being reckless?" he said with a wink and a roguish smile.

His smile softened, though, as he continued. "You have certainly proved that you would have made a very valuable employee when you started going out on missions with us. Not that you weren't already valuable, but, you know. The point is, we'll miss you around here, Cate."

"Miss me?" I asked worriedly – was I being fired? "I thought you said that I wasn't in trouble?"

Jack didn't answer me immediately, which would have worried me if it weren't for the fact that in place of an answer I was getting a steadily growing smile – from both Jack _and_ the Doctor. I looked back and forth between the two of them, but neither was giving anything else away. "What?" I asked. "What did I miss? Am I… not fired?"

Jack chuckled, then finally spoke. "No, you're definitely not fired. In fact, we'll be more than happy to still consider you an employee if you choose to leave – you'll just be taking a rather long unpaid vacation. And, of course, you can feel free to come back whenever you'd like, even if just to say hello."

I had an idea of what he was alluding to, but I refused to believe it until I heard it in no uncertain terms, preferably straight from the horse's mouth. "Thanks, Jack, that's very nice of you, but… Where am I going?"

"Well, Cate," the Doctor said with a grin, "I was wondering if you'd like to come with me."

Fighting back to urge to scream, "YES!!" rather loudly, I settled for a much calmer, "Are you serious?"

"Completely serious!" the still-grinning Doctor answered. "Like Jack said, you've more than proven yourself – _you_ came to _my _rescue! Besides," he said, his broad smile slipping slightly for the first time during the conversation, "I've been travelling on my own for a while now. It would be nice to have some company again."

"Well, how could I say no to that?" I answered. "Not that was going to say no anyway," I added quickly. "You really want me to come with you?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yup!"

"Then yes! Definitely! I'd love to!" I beamed. "I always thought that it'd be amazing to travel with y – Oh," I stopped my rave short. "Right. You don't know about that."

"That you're from another dimension where all of this is a TV show? Or, rather, a couple of TV shows?" the Doctor said.

"Um. Yeah." I looked at Jack for an explanation.

"I told him," Jack said. "He asked me if I had any idea why you were the only one to remember him, and the best explanation I could come up with was that you're from a different dimension. So of course, I had to explain that statement."

"I should say," I laughed. "Is that really why I was the only one to remember you, though?" I asked the Doctor.

"I don't think we'll ever know for sure," he responded. "But it seems to be the only logical explanation. Since you technically never existed here, maybe you were exempt. I mean, you wouldn't have just all of a sudden forgotten me if you were still in your original dimension; the show probably just would have gotten cancelled or something. So you remembered me here, too. That's all I can figure."

I shrugged. "Sounds good to me!"

Jack smiled and rubbed his hands together. "Well. It's been a quiet day – except for this, anyway. I'll bet everyone's pretty much done with their paper work, so I say we close up early and head to that pub down the street for a bit of a going-away party."

I had to laugh. "Torchwood throws going-away parties?" I asked.

"It's not exactly company policy, I guess. Then again, we've never really had anyone go away; at least, not all nicely, like this." He smiled. "Besides, in a way, it's not actually 'Torchwood' throwing you a going-away party – it's me, and the rest of the team."

"And me," the Doctor put in, raising a hand slightly. "Well, sort of. I'm also the one taking you away, so I'm not sure if I count."

"We'll count you in, Doctor," Jack laughed, while I giggled in the background. "So really, it's just some friends, throwing their other friend a going-away party – it's not any of our faults that the only friends you've had time to make here are your colleagues!"

About forty-five minutes later, the entire Torchwood team (plus Rhys and the Doctor) had gathered at the pub for my "party." It was absolutely brilliant; I had a great time, and I'm going to miss these guys so much. But, I've still got all of their cell phone numbers in my phone, and they all have mine; so, they're hardly unreachable. And, just in case that wasn't enough, it turns out that I'll have something to remember each of them by: they'd all gone and bought me going-away _gifts_! Apparently, the Doctor had called Jack a few days ago (conveniently – if unsurprisingly – Jack had given Martha his number before Martha gave her phone to the Doctor), checking to make sure that I was there and that November (or, you know, now) would be a good time to find me. In the days since that call, Jack and the rest of the team had planned this party (that Jack had earlier made out to be an impromptu decision, that liar!) and even bought me gifts!

Gwen had been hiding the gifts at her apartment (where, I have no idea, because I never saw them), and Rhys brought them with him when he came to the pub. Because they had been in charge of keeping the gifts, it was Gwen who got everyone's attention at the table to give them out. I tried to protest, saying that they didn't have to get me anything, but Gwen (and the rest of the team) would have none of it.

"Maybe we didn't have to, but we wanted to, so we did," Gwen smiled in response to my objections. "And we're not taking them back, so you're just going to have to deal with it!"

"Well, if you insist," I smiled back. "Thanks, everyone, really!"

"No problem," Gwen said. "Now, we figured, you're going to really have your own bedroom now, a proper one, not just a guest bed in our little flat. And even though Jack assured us that this… TARDIS, was it?" Jack, the Doctor, and I nodded. "Right, this TARDIS has everything you need for your bedroom, we still thought that you might want some of your own stuff, anyway. So, we got you these."

The Doctor caught my eye; he had his eyebrow raised in a, "Well, this is new!" expression. I tried not to laugh – too much. Poor Doctor; none of his other companions had ever gotten a party before (not to my knowledge, anyway). He wasn't used to this kind of fanfare.

All thoughts of chuckling at the Doctor's amazement at humans, however, were pushed from my mind when the gifts started coming. They were so thoughtful! Gwen and Rhys had bought me a bed-set, complete with sheets, a pillowcase, a blanket, and a comforter. (And although they couldn't have known this when they bought it, it even looks as if the color – deep green – will go quite nicely with the TARDIS's particular shade of coral.) Tosh bought me a cute throw pillow in a slightly lighter shade of green (I say "cute" because it has a smiley-face stitched onto it!); the color of the pillow almost exactly matches the throw blanket I got from Owen (probably because it was suggested by Tosh, but in the end Owen liked the idea and decided to go with it). Ianto, ever practical (but not to the point where it takes away from being sweet), bought me a new diary, for when this one runs out – he said he keeps a journal, too, so he knows how nice it is to have one waiting.

And Jack's gift? He bought me a very pretty, engraved-metal picture frame. As I opened the gift, he stood up, and explained that his plan was for us to take the picture that would fill it tonight, at the pub; we would be able to develop it at the Hub before I left, if the Doctor and I didn't mind taking a five-minute detour (there's a machine at the Hub for photo-developing, given the top-secret nature of most of the pictures Torchwood takes). So, we all got together, and had the Doctor take a group shot of the whole team, plus Rhys. (I also managed to get a picture with everyone individually before the night was done – what can I say, I'm a picture person. I kept a scrapbook back home, and the tendency to want photos is hard to shake.)

That group photo – a nice, big one that came out beautifully – is now happily sitting in its frame, perched on the chest of drawers across from my bed (I've taped the other photos to the wall behind the chest, until I can find frames for those, too). This bed, of course, is happily decked out in its brand-new sheet set, and decorated by the matching throw pillow and throw blanket. The diary, too, has its place here – it's lying on the desk on the other side of the room, waiting to be used.

As for me? Well, I'm sitting on my new bed with its new sheets, leaning against the smiley-face pillow with the throw blanket covering my feet, glancing at the pictures from tonight's party every time I look up from what I'm writing in my old diary (looking forward to the day when I can start using my new one). Yup, I'm in my brand-new bedroom, on the TARDIS, relaxing after a fun night with my friends. My time at Torchwood has been _amazing_, and I'll miss Jack, Gwen, Ianto, Tosh, Owen, and Rhys so, so, so much. But, like every companion before me has realized, I wouldn't trade the experience that I'm about to have for anything.

You'd think that I'd know what to expect, traveling with the Doctor, after having seen the TV show; but really, all that's done is taught me that there's no way I'll ever know _exactly_ what to expect, not with the Doctor. But, I'm about to find out – the Doctor's just called for me from the control room, saying it's time to go. Where, I don't know – when, I don't know – but there is one thing that I can be absolutely certain of:

It's going to be _fantastic_.

* * *

_A/N 2: The End! For Torchwood, that is (though that's definitely not to say that the team won't be at least mentioned occasionally!). This story will continue in the Doctor Who section from now on, under the very similar title, "The Impossible Journey of Cate Thomas."_

_Thanks again for reading, and for all the reviews, and I hope you'll follow me – and Cate – for her travels with the Doctor! _


End file.
